


the dragon and the star

by ImberNox



Category: A3! (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, M/M, incredibly self-serving but i am willing to share at the dinner table, not based on really any dragon story just a conglomeration of what i like in fantasy aus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:34:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 41,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28451001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImberNox/pseuds/ImberNox
Summary: Dragons - in their two species of wyrms and amphitheres - are long since extinct as the monstrous creatures they once were, but their lineage, widely prevalent in family trees, still exists. Only a few times a generation, a child will be born with enough of the dragons' traits present to be called a 'dragon.' Hyodo Juza is raised by his mother with one golden rule above the rest : do not excessively desire other things or people. In an accident, Juza ends up doing exactly that, and the first thing to enter his 'hoard' is a small, fallen star. The same night, he meets a boy roughly his age in the woods. Their companionship leads to the second thing to enter his hoard : Settsu Banri.
Relationships: Hyoudou Juuza/Settsu Banri
Comments: 36
Kudos: 55





	1. the star shower

**Author's Note:**

> i'm really not sure how to preface this work beyond admitting how extremely self-indulgent this is and that i have 0 clue how i got this idea. i woke up and my mind said 'but what if juza was a dragon' and i said yes? uhh in this au a dragon can collect a 'hoard' by imprinting on (excessively wanting) something or someone, but this can also be reversed if the dragon is persistent enough in learning to let go. i feel like i should add a disclaimer that banris into juza waaaay before the imprint actually happens. there is No dubcon in this fic
> 
> thanks, and i hope you enjoy!!!

One of the first things that Juza was taught by his mother – after, of course, the traditional raising of him to speak with his manners, be kind to others, not abuse the power of being alive by causing misery to other living things, and such – was to never covet any object or person too closely to the heart. The explanation given had been simple : to covet and to desire is to invite undue pain. Whether something is lost or it dies, that is the nature of how the things in the world change, and it does not do one well to try to change that nature.

In hindsight, it’s a difficult thing to teach a child, who wishes for sweets and sunny days and toys while clutching what they have tight in small fingers. Juza hadn’t questioned it at the time, of course. He remembers even now being in awe of the gentle way his mother had said it, using a small bit of her magick to portray a short-lived candle light in her palm. After that day, he had felt awfully smart to know this secret to living fully. Pride had often bloomed in his chest when, seeing another of the town’s children crying in the street for dropping a treat, he knew that the tears were something he never had to suffer.

Of course, there had been lapses in this diligence. He still loved the sweet breads his mother baked and the fancier treats the neighbors could bake when they had some extra sugar and flour. Admittedly, it was remarkably easier to get him to do things when a sweet food was on the line. Occasionally, his mother would bribe him with fresh sweet buns in order to get him to help her at the cauldron.

But those were small moments in an otherwise long life.

For a few years, his mother had told him that he was a slow grower. But, with how quickly kids grow from toddler to child, it hadn’t been long before she had finally sat him down on the stool in their small living room and told him.

Their family’s bloodline – though hard to trace beyond a few generations in the past – was one of the many, many lines where dragon descendence was present, and he had the ever-rare luck of being born with those bundles of genes at the forefront. It only occurred to a few families every generation, meaning that, of the entire kingdom, he was perhaps one of only two or three born with strong enough traits to really be called a ‘dragon.’ At first, he hadn’t believed it. Laughing, he had asked his mother if this was another story. Her small, nervous smile had told him otherwise and, even as a child barely out of his toddler years, it had made _him_ nervous, too.

That night, he had learned why he grew so slowly compared to the other kids in the town, why he had particular fondness for specific things, and – most importantly, most dangerously – why it was important for him to never covet too much any thing or person. Dragons, his mother explained, had the wonderful skill of giving life to whatever they love. She had called this affection ‘hoarding,’ which he had asked her to define. It meant to keep excessively, she had explained, but the meaning was different for dragons. It could also mean to imprint so strongly an affection onto something that it becomes something they depend on to live happily. Without their hoard, a dragon could fall into deep depression or violent rage.

But there was a catch, she said, to this wonderful gift of life and love. To _steal_ something from a dragon’s hoard is to control that dragon indefinitely, if they are lucky, or to die if they are unlucky. Kings and their royal servantry have the means to survive stealing from a dragon and the means to keep a dragon under their control. The common thief does not.

And so, at the age of ten, with the mind and body of a five-year-old, Juza had essentially been taught that to love, for him, is to run the risk of killing or being killed.

He had spent several days alone in his bedroom, afraid for his life and crying : terrified every time his mother knocked on the door with food and words of comfort. According to his mom’s dinner stories at the table nowadays, he hadn’t left his room for a week and the house for even longer.

But, eventually, he had left his house’s walls again and enjoyed sunlight and the smell of the forests and grasses again, holding tightly to his mother’s skirt.

Hachiko, for her part, fiercely loved her son and was prepared to go so far as to kill anyone who sought to steal from the hoard her son would eventually begin to accumulate. Her kindness, in the beginning, had been to caution her son from imprinting on anything too young. Nostalgia is a dangerous affection. Coupled with a dragon’s coveting, there could be no undoing that sort of dependency. But if Juza knew in anticipation of loving, she had given him the gift of distance. Letting go of things in his hoard would, in theory, be easier. It had been the first step to ensuring freedom for her son.

The second step, in her rulebook, was to ensure that her son knew how to separate love from coveting. She taught that in the ways she raised him and loved him without demanding his attention while he was busy nor keeping him from leaving to go play far from home. In a sense, Juza had more freedom than any other child. A dragon’s scales could protect them from all mortal injury, and the state of both the kingdom and the town community gave her no reason to fear any other fates.

Juza grew up, learning how to help his mom run their small magick shop. This was the third step : to ensure that he had entertainment beyond his scales and coveting. And so, Juza accompanied his mom on her ingredient-gathering trips across the kingdom. He had studied, starting at age eighteen (but nine, if any of the travelers asked) the basic properties of magick and their interactions : just enough to let him help at the cauldron when his mother was busy. Eventually, he had discovered a certain aptitude for hiding things in small containers charmed to shrink objects for carrying.

This had its benefits, of course. Traveling was much easier with this skill, as well carrying ingredients and deliveries about the town. Somehow, though, he knew that this worried his mother – how easily he could begin to hide things and collect a hoard without anyone’s knowledge – and he strove to never carry anything more than he needed. He didn’t dare try to vindicate himself in front of her, just silently took caution. And she seemed to know this, after a little bit of time.

The next big moment in his life had been meeting Tsumugi.

His mother’s magick shop was plain and unassuming in both its appearance and in the kinds of orders it fulfilled. Located in a small town away from major roads, it had low traffic from mainstream travelers, who were the primary concerns that Juza had to be aware of. Royal travelers, he had been taught to avoid at all costs.

But the shop’s infrequently praised specialty was his mother’s dragon blood garden.

Dragon blood – or _lycoris draconis_ – is, perhaps surprisingly when considering its name, a flower rather than actual dragon’s blood. However, its namesake comes from dragons for a reason. The red, silk-petaled lily secretes a unique type of resin from its pistils that, if collected and combined with a small amount of other ingredients, works as a blood coagulation medicine for dragons, whose blood notoriously is susceptible to disorders from too much clotting to an ability to clot. And while a dragon cannot die from a mortal wound, necessarily, dragons may fall into deep sleep or risk constant fatigue and dizziness if a wound is left open to bleed.

Juza’s mother’s main reason for growing her dragon bloods was to protect her son, but there was a significant quality to the hybrid she had managed to breed : it could also act as a general stabilizer for emotion dysregulation, another common trait in dragons whose livelihood once often depended on raging until reclaiming objects or persons of its hoard. It was for this unique quality that Tsumugi had come to buy pots of the hybrids from her.

Juza remembers that he had been skittish around Tsumugi just as much as any stranger or customer at first meeting, but it had been easier, somehow, to trust the man as he returned a few times each year for his mother’s fertilizer. Sometime in the first few years of their knowing each other, his mom had explained to Juza that Tsumugi was a dragon, too, from the eastern lands of the kingdom territory. It had been emotional and overwhelming, in the beginning, to know that he knew another dragon.

Juza had asked Tsumugi all sorts of questions : how old he was really, how he knew he was a dragon, what he did to pass the time, if he had a hoard. And Tsumugi had answered his questions as they came, never unkindly, explanations on the tip of his tongue if his answers ever caused Juza confusion. Tsumugi was, really, thirty-five years old, though Juza’s mom often teased him for being a teenager still, and he lived in a large house near the eastern river delta with four husbands. All of his four husbands were people in his hoard, and the only other thing in his hoard was his extensive acreage of gardens and greenhouses that he maintained on behalf of the queen.

Tsumugi, it was explained to Juza, already worked for the royal family as an agreement that the royal family never come near his residence nor his partners.

This was a much scarier thing to learn.

For another twenty years, Juza traveled between home with his mother and Tsumugi’s place near the rivers, where he met and befriended Tasuku, Homare, Hisoka, and Azuma.

They were all kind to him in ways that, explicitly, he could trust unlike any other adults he had met before. Tasuku was just as old as Tsumugi : cribmates in the wet nurse’s home that had ended in the baffling situation of a dragon infant already having imprinted on another. Homare and Hisoka had come together : former employees of an inn in the capital where Homare worked as entertainer (though it was never explained to Juza what, exactly Homare did to entertain ; he assumed it was the poems but received no confirmation when he asked) and Hisoka worked as a hunter of rare, wild boars for the kitchen. And Azuma, both the calmest of the bunch and the one that Juza didn’t know if he liked or didn’t, had met Tasuku first and, intrigued at the idea of meeting a dragon, had accepted Tasuku’s offer to visit.

Beyond familiarizing himself with another dragon's lifestyle, though, Juza learned skills from Tsumugi that were crucial to his future. He learned the process of imprinting : that is, to include something in one’s hoard. Tsumugi described it peculiarly, but, at the same time, it had somehow made sense.

“I don’t really remember imprinting on Tasuku,” Tsumugi had chuckled softly while showing Juza how to trim the stalks of the orchid plant after blooming. “But when I imprinted on my first flower… how do I put it… it felt like, well, like I couldn’t live if I couldn’t care for it. It was like I knew that it was a part of me, somehow, and that I wasn’t myself without it. Is that helpful?”

It had been. Tsumugi had also confessed, later when they had finished trimming for the day and were carrying the gardening scissors back to the shed, that he was trying to learn how to let people in his hoard go. His plants, Tsumugi had said, he could let go. Part of the reason why he played royal gardener was because he could imprint on plants and keep them alive until they were to be returned, upon which he could easily retract his imprint and let them back out of his hoard.

People, apparently, were harder for Tsumugi. He had yet to understand how to let any of his partners go. They weren’t asking, but Tsumugi had confessed that it was imperative to him that they had the choice to stay or leave.

Juza still often wonders if it’ll be the same for him.

Kumon was born only fourteen years ago but is almost Juza’s physical and mental age already. He zips around the house, growing faster than Juza can even comprehend, but Kumon is kind and never professes anything other than deep love for his older brother. It makes it easier to return the affection, even when the pool of fear churns in his stomach knowing that he will live to see his brother’s entire life before he himself even begins to grow into old age.

His mother is already so much older, too. She was only twenty-three when she had him, but she’s already two years away from her sixties. It scares Juza, a little, to know that he’s already spent more time alive with her than he probably has left remaining. He knows most kids don’t have this : most kids get to show their parents what their adulthood looks like, introduce them to their new lives. He won’t have that with his mom.

It’s a little lonely.

A knock on his bedroom door startles Juza out of his textbooks. He doesn’t really understand the processes that go into magick, but he’ll be damned if that means he doesn’t spend as much time as he can memorizing the helpful tips. A glance out the window tells him it’s getting close to dinner time.

“Sweetie?” his mom calls.

“It’s open,” he answers.

There’s a moment before the old doorknob creaks and she pushes inside, hinges squealing a little. Her eyes fall on him at his desk and go gooey with her usual affection. Juza really doesn’t think he deserves all of the praise she gives him for continuing his magick studies.

“Almost dinnertime.”

“Uh, yeah. Did you want help?”

“No, no,” she hums and comes further into the room. She draws up Juza’s window-side stool and sits with him at the desk. “I got a meat pie started in the oven. Just waiting for Kumon to make his way home. Oh, are you working on your potions?”

“Sorta.”

“You know for that one,” she points at the list of potential ingredients for mood-calming incense, “you can add wild rosehip jam instead of any of the other herb berries. Makes it way easier and cheaper.”

He jots the note down on the page. She listens to him write ; he listens to her swing her legs idly. This is normal for them : this comfortable silence in being together. Many a night they spent curled up together on the couch downstairs without talking before Kumon came along.

“There’s going to be a star shower tonight,” she says. “I saw it in my afternoon tea.”

It’s unusual, Juza thinks, that his mom takes the time to check the tea leaves. She must have been looking for something else.

“At the north shores?” he asks.

There hasn’t been one there in so long. The sand along its beaches has already lost much of its potential for magick use.

“No, further east. Somewhere local. I was thinking of asking you to go out for me and try to find where they land : get some of whatever gets blessed.”

“You’re not coming?”

“No, my knees are acting up again,” she sighs. “I’m going to need to invest in a good cane soon, I think. Maybe one of the alchemist’s will have a decent one with some carnelian.”

“Should I take Kumon?”

“If you’d like,” she stands back up from the stool with a slight wince. Her knees must really be acting up. She carries the stool back over to where it was. “He’ll be home soon, so keep your ears open for dinner.”

“You can leave the door open,” he offers, and she leaves it open with a small wink.

Her footsteps trail down the hallway and, heavily, down their narrow staircase. Juza turns back to the textbook and shuts it. Going out scouting for a star shower isn’t something they do very often : mostly because not many star showers come this far south. They’re all usually up around the north shores, except, of course, for the recent drought. New starfall, even if not where it’s needed, is good.

He starts packing his bag, getting his record book and his star-collecting gear. Stars, for dragons, are a somewhat dangerous thing to handle. The fragments, which are most of what falls from the night skies, aren’t that much of a worry. It’s still a good idea, his mom has told him, to pack gloves, though. There are other things, too : small boxes and capsules that will shrink whatever he finds and keep it safe and portable until he gets home.

At dinner, he asks Kumon if he wants to come along for company, but Kumon – surprisingly – answers that he has plans to go out with some of the other kids in town and play tricks in the woods. Their mother reminds Kumon to use his best judgment of what counts as play and what doesn’t, and Juza settles in for a nice and quiet night running errands. He loves his family, but he also loves his alone time. It’s quieter that way : less stressful.

He sets out a few hours after nightfall and keeps his eyes trained skywards.

Something in his gut tells him to head due east. There are huge fields in the forest there : birch trees as far as the eye can see in the daytime and dense underbrush that is home to all kinds of pixie’s herbs. The pixies aren’t often friendly to travelers. It’s the footsteps that crush their grasses and snap their branches that infuriate them to the point of swarming people with their sparkling-hot hands and wings, grabbing and stinging wherever they can.

They seem to leave Juza alone, though. Maybe it’s because they know they can’t get through a dragon’s scales. Maybe they know he’s a magick user and permit him to harvest their excess. They’re like bees, in a strange sense, Juza thinks.

At night, some of them like to venture a little beyond their neck of the woods. Juza catches glimpses of their small, indigo shimmer in between the leaves of trees he passes beneath. A few more mischievous ones drop pinecones on his head until he looks up, upon which they vanish from sight.

“It’s the dragon,” he hears their whispers still, even as they hide from his view.

The word ‘dragon’ rustles like wind through the trees. He presses on and ignores their whispers. Pixies are ambivalent creatures. What they say is never outright rude, nor is it ever particularly kind. It’s up to the confidence – or lack thereof – of the traveler to internalize and attach an imagined tone to the words. In Juza’s ears, they’re frightened.

His mother insists that’s not true.

There’s a river that cuts through the fields in the forest and separates the west banks of nutrient-rich herbs from the east banks of the herbs rich in flavor and scent. In the daytime, the yellow leaves of the bushes gleam with their waxy leaves and look almost like a sort of golden fog, clinging to the ground. At night, their bright, golden yellow is subdued and hard to distinguish from the other flora of the forest. Only when a pixie lands on a leaf does the small indigo light offer a glimpse of the color.

This was one of Juza’s favorite places to go in his childhood. When he was too short to see over the crests of the underbrush, all he had to do was run due east from the town center through the forests as far as he could go until the river. When he was done for the day, he just had to run towards the setting sun, and it would lead him straight home.

Juza stoops by the river bank and peers down into the waters.

This river runs into the Sumeragi Kingdom from its birth waters in the mountains of the Tachibana Kingdom : the mountains serve as a type of natural border between the two kingdoms. Although, hearing from the talk about the town square of the merchants with the travelers, that may be changing soon. Regardless of who _owns_ the river, though, it carries with its water various types of jewels useful for alchemy and magick alike. Of course, the mountainside towns of Tachibana get the largest of these jewels, but the smaller ones can avoid their nets and trickle down into these backwaters.

Juza spots a small nocturnal zircon in the riverbed and begins to take off his sandals. He wades into the shallow waters of the river – it’s deeper the further one goes – and scoops it out of the rocky bottom. It’s small but still worth enough. His mom will be happy to have some extra in her ingredient stock.

He can’t spend much time hunting for river gems tonight, though. He has to keep his eye on the sky. So, he returns to the shore and dries his feet as well as he can on the grass.

He collects some of the pixie lilac that grows so strong and abundant here under their bushes and hunts for owls caught in hunter’s canopy traps. There are a few tonight, and he climbs the trunks of the trees with those occupied traps and, collecting a few feathers, lets them fly off into the night. Then, he dismantles the traps. Hunters aren’t allowed in pixie fields to begin with.

It’s close to midnight when he sees the first star droplet fall in the sky. It lands somewhere east : just across the riverbank, and he curses his luck for a moment before sucking it up and swimming through the cold waters of a river born from melted mountain ice. At least it’s summer, he reminds himself. He doesn’t need to rely on fire magick in order to stay warm tonight.

The star shower leads him to the edge of the eastern pixie bushes : in a small clearing he hasn’t stumbled across before. Rosehips and wild cosmos creep along the bushes and the grasses in quantities like he hasn’t seen before. Even just by walking, he crushes flowers under his feet. The stars continue to rain down in small, broken up fragments. The summer air has already done a number to them as they enter the atmosphere.

The plants they hit glimmer and, absorbing the magick of the star fragments, glow faintly in the night. They will grow strong beyond anything imaginable for the next few months, thriving just off of the magick. The deer that stop to eat the leaves and the birds that pause to eat the berries will also flourish, strengthen, and breed. Insects, too, will grow large and healthy. The pixies may even see increased vigor.

He’ll wait for the star shower to stop, he decides, then collect what fragments lay unabsorbed on the supersaturated flora, as well as some of the blessed berries and flowers. It takes some time, of course, for a star shower to end, so he huddles down at the edge of the clearing and takes the time to stare up and admire the sky.

If his mom were here – or Kumon – they’d have to give the shower a wide berth. Unlike Juza, whose scales can protect him even at the last second of impact, they would have reason to fear small fragments hurtling towards them at such awe-inspiring speeds. Even if it is something as harmless as star droplets.

But it’s then that he notices a bright light in the sky, bright enough that its light shines throughout the clearing like daytime. It hurtles down, seemingly larger and larger as it grows close.

Juza gapes, wordless, motionless.

It’s a full star.

Granted, it’s small for how large stars often come, but it’s full, and it’s, he squints, it’s hurtling straight for him. He barely has the time to react and outstretch his hands, because in that split second something in him decides that he cannot bear to let it be absorbed into the grass and flowers, before it hits.

Juza hasn’t felt his scales come out in a long time. The last time, in fact, had been almost a decade ago when he had accidentally dropped the wrong ingredient into his mother’s cauldron and, her shrieking a warning and grabbing him to run out of the room, had some of the liquid explode onto his face. He had been fine, of course, but his mother’s burns had been bad.

This star should have burned his hands right off, but instead it floats – ever slightly – over his palms innocently. The deep purple of his scales closes after a second, leaving only his usual skin to hold the star.

And something, he can’t describe how it feels – can’t even begin to think about how he feels – but something _moves_ inside him like he’s been asleep for a very, very long time : like he’s never been awake until now. It settles warm and flickering in his stomach, creeping up into his heart. It’s warm like the heat and warmth of the star in his palms.

And suddenly he feels like he could stare at it forever and never tire of its beauty.

Then, he pauses. He looks up into the clearing, now resting : the star shower having passed. Darkness begins to creep back in from the depths of the forest. A few pixies are here to also harvest, but they are not harvesting. They peek over the leaves of the bushes at him.

“The dragon has a star,” one whispers.

 _Wrong_. Juza has a hoard.

He now understands what Tsumugi meant when he said something about not feeling whole, feeling empty and used, at the idea of not having his hoard. This star in his palms, he needs this.

Panic is the next emotion to wash over him. He hears his mother’s warnings burn in his mind – do not covet, do not succumb to the pain of being unable to let go – and he curls in on himself in shame. There’s nothing he can do now, though. It’s not as if he can just let go.

So, he hides it. Just like his mother always feared : just like _he_ had always feared. He draws out from the pocket of his knapsack one of his capsules – the one he keeps on him at all times in case he finds something pretty to show his mom – and he uncaps it. His magick is strong for this, and even the star shrinks down to the size of a small bobble sewn onto a gown’s hem for glitter. And then it’s in the capsule, and the lid is shut, and Juza has hidden a star.

The pixies shiver their wings.

“Dragon,” one calls. This is unusual. The pixies do not speak to anyone but themselves. “There is a traveler following you.”

Another one, deep indigo, crawls out tentatively around a rosehip cluster.

“Do not hide the star from your mother.”

Juza startles. “How do you know-” he tries to demand, but their wings shiver again, and he silences.

“Pixies know all,” the first one murmurs in a voice like a firefly’s blinking light in the dark. “All that enters our fields, at least.”

Another shiver rustles through the bushes. The pixies are leaving.

“The dragon has a star,” they continue to whisper to themselves as they leave. “The dragon has hidden a star.”

Juza stares down at the capsule. He has. He swallows thickly. He has hidden a star.

Juza forgets about the pixies' mention of the traveler as soon as they leave him in the clearing. His thoughts are too busy and his mind too frantic. He can barely keep his hands from shaking as he picks the rosehips off from their branches. He scoops up some of the star fragments, too, but he leaves some behind for the pixies. Why, he doesn’t understand. Something in him tells him to leave them : some kind of apology or expression of gratitude for what they witnessed.

With luck, they will not whisper of this to his mother. Juza's not sure he could handle breaking her heart like that.

He’s across the river and halfway out of the forest when a twig snaps somewhere in front of him, and he tenses up.

“Y’know, I’ve heard a lot ‘bout dragons, but I thought they’d be,” the guy in front of him takes a long time to find what he wants to say, “better.” Juza scowls, and the guy snickers. “What are you? My height, only a little heavier? Shouldn’t you have scales, big boy?”

“Name yourself,” Juza growls.

“Settsu Banri,” the guy sniffs and stalks forward. For an introduction to a dragon, he has guts to already be sliding his sword out of its sheath. “But what’s _really_ important is my girl’s name,” he swings the sword in a little mocking pattern. “She’s my baby Lucy.”

Juza snorts, and the guy doesn’t seem to be flattered by it.

“You got a fucking problem?” he spits.

“What?” Juza retorts. “You’re so pathetic you call a piece of metal your girlfriend?”

Settsu doesn’t answer with words. Something angry snaps in his eyes, and, in the next second, that same sword comes down furious onto Juza. If this weren’t a fight – and if Juza wasn’t royally fucking pissed off – he’d be a little more impressed at the fact that the guy can swing a sword as fast as a star can fall. Given the situation, though, Juza just smirks when the metal clangs off his scales without dealing the slightest amount of damage.

It hurts a little, sure. The scales don’t absorb the pressure, but there’s no cut : no blood.

“Ya really do have scales,” the guy sneers. “Guess you’re not a total fucking waste of blood.”

He goes for a second swing, but Juza catches the sword in his fist this time and tugs it right out of his hands. Now, there’s a little bit of something new in the guy’s eyes. Juza continues to walk up into his space, and the guy doesn’t move. His lips, now parted – in terror or in amazement, Juza doesn’t care – match his wide eyes. Juza stops in front of him.

The guy swallows.

“Woah,” he says intelligently, and it’s the last thing out of his mouth before Juza punches him hard enough in the face – scales out – to send him up off his feet before he hits the ground.

He’s out like a light, of course. Juza takes a small moment to stare down at the guy’s body, still as a stone, before he drops the sword and rubs his hand and shoulder. Damn, he packed a fucking punch behind his sword swings. But Juza steps over him anyways on his way towards town.

Juza doesn’t realize how much that little spat interested him until he gets in through the door at home. His mom’s voice from the living room welcoming home is what jerks him back to the reality of the evening – he remembers the star – and he breaks out into a nervous sweat instantaneously.

“Honey, that _is_ you, right?” her tone’s becoming concerned.

“Uh,” he says. He needs to respond, or he’ll scare her. “Y- Yeah!”

She hobbles out into the entryway and looks him up and down. “Are you alright, honey? You’re shaking head to toe.”

“Cold,” he says. “Cold outside.”

“But it’s summer?” she says and opens the door to stick her head out. “Honey, it’s plenty warm. Are you feeling alright? Do you want some warm soup?”

“No!” And then, he feels bad when she flinches at his volume. “No, I. I. Stuff. Star. Stuff. Berries.”

She’s getting _really_ concerned now. “Kumon!” she calls up the stairs. “Can you come down here? It’s your brother!”

She doesn’t need to say another word before Kumon’s flying out through his bedroom door and launching himself down the steps. His eyes find his brother’s, and then Kumon rakes his gaze up and down.

“Why’s he shaking?” And now _his_ voice sounds panicked, too.

“Fine,” Juza says. “I’m. I.”

Kumon’s arms find his shoulders and begin to steer him into their home, towards the hearth in the living room. It’s a kind gesture. But then his mother’s hands begin to take the knapsack off his back, and the sight of the capsule with the star sears into his vision, and his sight goes blank for a moment. When he blinks back, his mom’s on the floor.

Kumon lets go of his shoulders. His mom stares up at him in shock.

“I need to go,” Juza blurts, and he makes a break for the stairs.

In the solace of his room, he can somewhat calm down. He slumps to the floor against his bedroom door and stares at the floorboards. He’s never gotten aggressive to anyone before in his family. He would never hurt Kumon or his mom, or so he thought. He hates himself suddenly in a uniquely violent way. She was trying to help him, for Gods’ sakes.

Then, he thinks about the guy that tried to stop him : tried to open him up with his sword. Dread settles into his stomach. Juza could have killed him. He has no idea if he _did_ kill him.

Juza pulls the star’s container out from the pocket of his knapsack and stares at it for a moment : the crude metal behind which something quite literally not even of this planet is hidden. He takes it over to his desk and hides it in the back of a drawer. Tomorrow, he’ll take one of his fancier boxes and try some sealing magick : anything to be able to keep the star safe while hiding its magick traces from his awareness.

Hopefully, that will mitigate the effects of his imprint, too.

A small knock comes at his door.

“Juza.” It’s his mom’s voice. She sounds tired and horribly sad. She _must_ know. “Juza, honey. You… you have a good night. Get some sleep. In the morning… if you want to talk about, I’ll listen. But if you don’t, I won’t ask.” There's a small silence. "Honey, I love you, okay? Whatever happened tonight... you're safe here. Don't worry about any of that."

Guilt chokes him in his throat.

Her footsteps leave and turn downstairs. From the entryway, Juza can hear Kumon ask his mom something and her answer, but it’s far enough away that he can’t make out the words.


	2. the magick shop

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> banri argues his way into juza's life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh no... it's much longer than i was anticipating...

Juza wakes in the late hours of the morning to the sunlight and birdsong streaming in through the window. He lifts his head off his pillow a little and squints. He had forgotten to close his bedroom window last night. Or, thinking about it, he doesn’t remember opening it. Breaking free of the quilt on his bed – a gift from his mother to replace his old comforter – he spots the tray of tea and crackers on his desk. His mom must have come to check on him when he didn’t wake at dawn like usual.

His head is throbbing, and his body feels sore. Getting out of bed feels like he’s been in it for years. He even has to stretch his legs a little before standing up.

The tea has gone cold, but he drinks through the small pot regardless. The tea leaves are left on a napkin for him to read. Juza isn’t the most skilled with reading tea leaves, and neither is his mother, but they make do with the easier signs to read. He fetches his beginner’s guidebook and checks the corners and the basic pattern. East is his auspicious direction – amusingly ironic considering just last night – and the noon will be his busiest time of the day.

Juza glances out the window. It’s nearly noon now.

He should go downstairs, he knows, and talk with Kumon and his mom. They deserve to know what happened last night. He’s not ready yet, though, to show them the star. He’s not even sure if he’s ready to talk about it yet. But he picks the tray up and forces himself out of his bedroom and downstairs.

The kitchen’s quiet, but it always is after breakfast. His mom’s likely over in the annex of their house – the shop – getting the place ready for customers. Opening is at noon every week day and late morning on Saturdays.

Juza’s surprised to find Kumon knitting at the kitchen table.

“You okay?” Juza asks.

He sets the breakfast tray down on the counters and starts the tap water. Kumon sighs dramatically and moves the yarn to a better angle.

“I kinda goofed off with the pyrotechnics last night,” he admits. “Mom’s making me knit a new pouch for Muku. I, uh, managed to burn it up.”

Juza hides a snort of amusement. He can perfectly well envision the fiasco that had occurred. Kumon’s all too skilled at getting carried away, and Muku’s all too easy to convince to come along for the ride.

“How are _you_ feeling?” Kumon asks, and the guilt bubbles back up in Juza’s chest.

He sets the mug onto the dishes’ drying rack and moves onto cleaning the plate of crackers.

“Tired and sore,” he answers honestly. It’s the least he can do for now. “But better. I’m sorry for last night. I shouldn’t have lost control like that. I know you guys were trying to help.”

“What happened?”

“I’ll… tell you when Mom comes back in. Maybe at dinner.”

There’s a noise at the door to their house’s small courtyard, and his mom comes into the kitchen with an armful of candle jars. She catches Juza’s eye at the sink and simply smiles. Then, she immediately has Kumon carry the jars to their fireplace.

It’s almost like a normal noontime, which is both haunting and reassuring.

“So,” she chirps, coming up behind him and resting small and kind hands on his shoulder blades. She watches him set the plate onto the drying rack, wipes his hands on their dish towel. “Are you feeling alright?”

“Sore.”

“Yeah?” she lightly massages his shoulder. It feels oddly nice, and he leans back into it a smidgeon. “You slept well? You were out like a light when I went in earlier with your breakfast.”

“Slept fine.”

“Good,” she praises.

She lets go of his shoulder and moves to their ice box. Juza mourns the loss of the pressure on his muscles, seats himself at the table to watch Kumon resume his knitting. Their mom pulls out their milk jug and pours two glasses. One she slides over to Juza, and she starts to drink the second.

He slowly swallows his first sip of milk and wipes the smudge from his upper lip. “I,” he tries to start. Kumon and his mom look up curiously. “I’m sorry about last night.”

His mom nods slowly. “Did you want to talk about it?”

“I,” he’s not sure where to begin. Does he explain that he couldn’t help it : that he didn’t even know what he had done until it was already over? “I got in a fight,” is what he starts with, though it’s the least of what they need to discuss. “He… tried to kill me, I guess? I don’t think he really meant it. Seemed like he knew enough about dragons to know his sword wasn’t gonna do anythin,’ but he still swung at me like it might.”

“ _What_?”

Juza glances up at his mom’s face. He flinches back a little, even though he knows her expression isn’t for him. Still, he knows this face. She’s absolutely livid.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles.

“Who?” she demands. “Who did that to you?”

“Didn’t introduce himself,” Juza lies. “I’ve never seen him before.”

His mom sits on this information as she drinks her own cup of milk. Kumon and Juza wait at the table in silence. The knitting needles are still in Kumon’s hands. Then, she sets her empty mug down in the sink.

“If you ever see that man again, you must tell me.” Her eyes are dark and serious. “I will _not_ have my son be harassed by whatever traveler comes along, thinking he wants to try himself out against a dragon.”

Juza thinks about the way the guy’s eyes had looked last night : flashing with some kind of hot emotion when things got serious and how bored he had looked in the beginning. There was no way that he had thought he could win against a dragon. The guy had known. He’d been, Juza thinks on it, oddly happy when his sword got wrenched out of his hands.

“I don’t think he was really trying.”

“I don’t care if he was trying or not,” his mom disagrees, “he drew a sword on you.” She plays with the small necklace around her neck : a small protective charm that he keeps her safe from minor mistakes at the cauldron. “I just want you to be safe and left alone. I thought this town was small enough for that. Maybe you should go to Tsumugi’s for a little.”

“Mom, it’s okay. He… Trust me, mom.”

She eyes him, hands still at her neck shaking a little. Juza’s not sure if he can convince his mom about this. She’s too protective, sometimes, of him and Kumon. He’d make a joke about her being the real dragon here, but he’s positive it wouldn’t land well at all right now. So, he keeps his mouth shut and tries to convince her with just his expression.

Unexpectedly, she caves.

“Alright. But if _anyone_ else bothers you, please tell me. If you ever see him again, tell me. I want to know who he’s affiliated with.”

Juza likely won’t, but he nods and tries to look earnest about it.

His mom lingers in the kitchen until Kumon leaves to open the shop, and it’s just the two of them left in the room. The ticking of the clock sounds louder than it normally does.

“Juza, honey,” she says. “What else happened last night?”

The image of the star comes unbidden to him. Juza lowers his gaze to the table.

“Gathered some rosehips and cosmos that the star shower blessed,” he mumbles.

“That’s good,” she praises. “You can try out that recipe I pointed out yesterday.”

He nods mutely.

His mom sighs a little again and rounds the table to come to his side. Juza blinks up at her in confusion. She’s starts to brush some of his hair off his forehead, and he frowns in confusion. He doesn’t feel flushed ; there’s no reason to be checking his temperature. But then she presses a kiss to his forehead. Juza squirms in his seat.

“I’m proud of you.”

“Huh?”

“You’ve been such a good person your whole life. I know you’re still trying to be. That makes me as happy as it would any mother. I’ll keep my promise from last night. But,” she adds knowingly, “if you ever are comfortable enough to show me what it is that first entered your hoard, I’d love to see it.”

She squeezes his shoulder and walks off for the door.

“And if you want to help out in the shop today, the cauldron and register are both yours when you want!”

Juza is left alone in the kitchen. He takes in a shaky breath. Of course it was obvious to her what had happened. He looks down into his glass of milk. Maybe he should show her. Rather, he wants to be able to show her. This itch under his skin – the way it feels like his skin is crawling every time he thinks about the star and having it open to see – is unpleasant. He wants it gone. He wants to be confident about this.

Tsumugi is, after all. Azuma still goes traveling for years at a time, and Homare visits their magick shop from time to time even when Tsumugi isn’t with him. Juza wants to be able to trust his hoard with others in the same way.

First, though, he has magick he needs to do.

He spends the first hour of the afternoon working at the magick bench in the cauldron room, tinkering with the small tools that make it possible to build such tiny containers. He designs this container after his mother’s necklaces. Protective talismans are common enough for the average townsperson to wear, even in one as small as their own town. No one will think twice about him beginning to wear something similar around his neck.

But more magick needs to go into this : magick he’s not good at himself. Kumon’s not much help beyond his capacity to set everything on fire, so he enlists his mother’s help during a slow spell in the shop.

It’s fascinating to watch her ease around the magick bench. She knows where all of her ingredients are in the shop, and she doesn’t even need to think or make a list before she goes bustling to the different drawers of the cabinetry and snatching stalks from their ‘ready-to-use’ flowerpot of common herbs. It’s just a little bit of chamomile and a little bit of dragon blood resin with shards of amethyst and some wild strawberry-dipped oaken incense sticks.

The method of settling the magick into the vessel itself is more difficult, and Juza relinquishes all of this to her. He drifts between helping the few customers that come in and watching her at work. The incense stick is lit and smokes out towards the heat source of the cauldron’s hearth, but first passes over the bowl where Juza’s crafted piece rests. The chamomile and dragon blood are ground together into a sticky paste in their mortar and combined with the ash droppings of the incense, rubbed together and then over the amethyst shards. His mom situates a grouping of the gemstones on the table – metal container in the middle – and then closes the bowl over it to seal.

She tells Juza to check it sometime after dinnertime, once the ash and gemstones have seeped enough into the metal itself.

Thus begins the waiting game. Eventually, Juza slips out of the shop and back into their house. He gets Kumon a glass of juice and chats with his brother to help the punishment of knitting seem less painful. And then, he goes back to his bedroom to check on the star in his drawer and study.

There are still a few hours to go before dinnertime when he hears his mother call for him from the bottom of the steps.

“Juza, honey!”

“Yeah?” he calls back.

“There’s a customer asking for you!”

Juza narrows his eyes and closes the textbook. No one in town cares enough to call on him at the shop. They do that for Kumon, not him. And if it were Tsumugi, his mom would have just mentioned that. He leaves his bedroom and peers down the staircase.

“Did you make a new friend?” she asks. “I haven’t seen this one before.”

“I don’t have friends,” he mutters, and she bites her lip. Now he feels shitty for making her upset again. “I’ll get dressed and come down.”

“Alright, I’ll keep him entertained!” She turns to Kumon. “Are you getting your knitting done, young man?”

“This is taking _hours_!”

Juza huffs a quiet laugh and ducks back into his room. He’s not that undressed as it is, so he just grabs a vest and one of the old skirts in his closet, tosses them on over his house blouse and underpants. Then, for whatever reason, he snatches the star out of his drawer and shoves it into the pocket of his skirt.

He goes into the shop and hears his mom chatting with this customer up at the counter.

“-others?”

“Oh, just my sons are my apprentices for now! They’re still just learning some of the basics for now, but I anticipate my eldest will take over for me at some point down the line.”

“That’s the dragon one, innit?”

Juza freezes. He knows that voice.

“Yeah!” his mom’s voice sounds cheery, but Juza knows she’s likely suspicious to hell, sizing this customer up. “He’s just about to turn thirty-eight here in a few weeks. It’s so hard to believe it’s already almost been forty years.”

Juza comes around the corner and stares at the guy at the counter.

“Oh, there he is now!”

And when the guy turns around, Juza watches his mom immediately furiously begin scribbling the full description of the guy down on the notepad in her lap. Juza would be paying more attention to help her, but he’s too busy wrestling between shock and fury.

“Ah,” the guy says. “Found ya.”

“You,” Juza growls. “The fuck are you doing here?”

His mom’s head snaps up at his language, mouth a little agape. The guy doesn’t seem to notice any of what she’s up to behind him. He frowns a little.

“Not a great welcome, I gotta say. You plan on taking over this shop and ya can’t even speak to customers?”

“Y’ain’t a customer. Get the hell out.”

“Hah?”

The guy – Settsu, if Juza remembers correctly - starts to walk up to him just like he had done the last night. Juza’s mom gets between them even faster.

“I know I asked before,” she says, “but who are you?”

“Settsu Banri, traveling swordsman, at your service, milady.”

His mom doesn’t offer her hand for him to take. “And who is your employer?”

“Don’t got one.”

“You must have an employer to have a carrying license for a sword of that make.”

“Nope,” though Settsu does show off the fancy gold encrusted into its hilt. “Studied at the royal academy for swordsmanship, which means I don’t have to have an employer to carry my baby around.”

“The royal academy,” his mom repeats.

This isn’t going to be good.

“Look,” Settsu sighs and raises his palms up empty to show them. “I’m not actually tryin’ to cause any trouble, okay? I had a little fun last night, sure, but that was,” he shrugs and now starts to look a little uncomfortable. “Look. That was last night. That stays last night. I just wanna talk.” He looks over Juza’s mom head and makes eye contact with Juza : cocks an eyebrow up. “That good?”

His mom turns around and waits for his answer. Juza glances between the two of them, unsure how to answer. But hearing the guy out may get him off their case faster, so he ignores what his mom probably wants him to say and shrugs.

“Fine.”

Settsu grins like he’s just found a whole stash of nocturnal-shining diamonds. It sends some kind of unpleasant shiver up Juza’s spine.

“Juza,” his mom warns.

“It’s fine,” Juza reassures. He grabs the guy’s sleeve and pulls him towards the door back to the house. “We’ll be done talking by dinner.”

“Will we?” Settsu asks, and Juza immediately lets go of his sleeve.

The guy stays quiet, at least, once they’re out the door. He’s too busy looking around their small courtyard with his too-curious gaze. He points to the flowers by the house’s kitchen door and asks what they’re used for. Juza tells him that they’re there to look pretty, and Settsu just kind of hums.

It’s the same in the house, too : Settsu peering at the kitchen and around the corner into the living room even as Juza waits at the base of the staircase.

“It’s quaint,” Settsu remarks. “Is this really all of it?”

“What do you mean?”

Settsu shrugs and lightly fiddles at their old grandfather clock. A run of his finger across the ledge must leave some dust on his skin because he wipes it on his cloak.

“I didn’t know families could live in such small places.”

“If you’re trying to call us poor-”

“Shut your dumb mouth!”

The outburst comes from Kumon at the table. Juza doesn’t think he’s ever heard Kumon yell at someone before. The guy kind of startles and stares at Kumon.

“Uh,” he says eloquently, “who are you?”

“Kumon. Stay away from my brother. You’re the guy that fought him last night, aren’t you? You better watch out, or I’ll beat you up.”

“Kumon, enough,” Juza snaps. His brother goes rigid in his chair. “No one told you that.”

“But-”

“I can handle this.” Juza turns to Settsu and jerks a thumb to the stairs. “And you hurry up.”

“Yes, _sir_.”

Settsu sneers at him and elbows him out of the way to let him up the stairs first. Juza fights back the urge to send this guy flying again and just follows after him. He shows the way to his bedroom, closes the door behind them and turns to face Settsu.

Settsu, for his part, has already taken off his cloak and thrown it over the back of Juza’s desk chair and is on his way to getting his boots off.

“Don’t get comfortable.”

Settsu glances up. “Thought we were gonna _talk_ ,” he stresses this word oddly. The boots come off.

Juza’s not even going to try to figure out what that’s supposed to mean. He checks that the door’s locked and sits on his bed, seeing as Settsu’ll probably want to sit in his desk chair. Settsu doesn’t. He takes a seat on the bed startlingly close to Juza, angled towards him a little, too.

“Uh,” Juza starts to tell the guy about ‘personal space,’ but then a hand lands on his thigh. He shoves it off and scrambles off the bed. “What the hell?”

“What?”

The guy has the audacity to look peeved about this. He’s got his eyebrows furrowed together and his lips pulled into a grimace. Juza has the urge to punch it right off his face. His hands, balling into fists, catch Settsu’s attention. A smirk replaces the grimace.

“You’re new to this, aren’tcha?”

“New to _what_?”

Settsu hesitates. “Wait. What do you think we’re doing?”

“You were the one who said ya wanted to talk.”

“Ah,” the guy snickers. “Okay, wow. Yeah, when I said I wanted to ‘talk,’” he uses his fingers to make air quotes, “I was being polite because your mom was right there, man.”

It hits Juza, suddenly, what this guy thought was going to happen. The locked door and bedroom plan seems a lot more incriminating that he had thought only two minutes ago. In fact, his ears burn a little. He hopes to the Gods that Kumon doesn’t think – that his _mom_ doesn’t think – it’s like that. He flies to the door and bangs it open.

“Out.”

“Ah, come on,” Settsu crosses his legs. “We can really just talk. I mean, it’s not really normal, but we can do it.”

“Nothing to talk about.”

“Really?” the guy hums. “It’s not every day someone gets to meet a dragon, after all. Pardon me for being a little curious.”

“You got to try your sword on me. Isn’t that enough?”

Settsu cackles a little, and Juza burns in humiliation at his wording.

“This is too fun.”

And suddenly Settsu’s off his bed and sauntering over to Juza’s desk. He peers down at the cover of the textbook that Juza had been reading through earlier. Slowly, he cracks the cover and pages through. His eyebrows slowly raise up.

“Y’know, there was this really fucking annoying alchemist back at the royal grounds,” he says quietly. “Everyone kind of hated him, to be real. Even one of his own apprentices found him, like, egregious. I didn’t realize alchemy and magick use were this similar.”

“Similar?”

“Yeah, I mean. You’re both just following recipes, right?”

“Alchemists don’t care about the magick. Just the chemical properties.”

The guy shrugs. “Kinda similar if you ask me.”

“I wasn’t.”

He clicks his tongue in annoyance and glares over his shoulder at Juza for a moment before returning to the textbook. He snaps it shut and goes rummaging in the drawers. Juza hides his irritation best he can. It’s not like there’s anything important in there anymore. So long as Settsu doesn’t go reaching into his pockets – which he’s not sure he can put past the guy, knowing now what Settsu’s first plan had been in coming here – things are fine.

The first thing that catches Settsu’s interest is a few old nocturnal zircon that have already had their magick expended but that Juza keeps for their color. Juza has to confirm that they are, indeed, stagnant. The bottle of starlight is a little harder to explain, simply because starlight in itself is so complex that even magick users have difficulty in understanding its properties. All that Juza knows is that his mom wanted him to keep it near him in his childhood and had never asked for it back.

Settsu pulls out an old notebook, and Juza snatches that one out of his hands. That’s private.

Settsu makes a crude joke and moves on. They end up peeling through some textbooks that Juza hasn’t even gotten around to looking through yet. They talk for a small bit about the one sand type that allows its user to keep a constant source of light in a vial. When Juza admits that it’s too expensive to regularly sell in the shop, Settsu asks for the price. Juza’s not sure how he feels about Settsu calling the amount ‘pocket change.’

He wants to ask just who Settsu’s family is, but his mother’s voice from the doorway distracts him. She tells them it’s time for dinner. Juza realizes that it is, indeed, almost dark in the room. She asks if Settsu’s staying, worried tone and all, and Juza is about to say no when Settsu cuts in and says yes.

Dinner is, in a word, awkward. Settsu entertains Juza’s mother with his stories of all the different magick shops he’s been into in the capital : describing their jewel-crested sword hilts that offer benefits to their wielders and shields with enchantments to prevent them from cracking even under the club of the angriest canyon troll. Juza’s surprised, actually, that this kind of talk interests his mother. So frequently she balks at mentions of violence in her presence. But Settsu manages to suck her in.

While Juza’s not sure how he feels about this development, he’s keenly aware of Kumon growing angrier and angrier in his own chair watching a stranger capture his mom’s attention so.

Halfway through their meal, Kumon leans into Juza and whispers in his ear, “Why’s he at our table anyways?”

“Kumon,” their mom frowns. “Whispering isn’t polite.”

Settsu meets Juza’s eyes and raises an eyebrow. Juza turns his gaze back down to his plate. He stabs a piece of the sweet, flaky crust of the pot pie and busies himself with enjoying the flavor. It’s been a while since his mom’s made a meat pie this nice.

After dinner, though, it’s finally time to show Settsu the door. Juza walks him back to the shop in silence. It isn’t until he unlocks the shop’s main entrance and holds it open for Settsu that either of them speak.

“Kinda nice,” Settsu mumbles. “Just hanging.”

“What? You’ve only ever fucked and left?”

Settsu glares at him like the ice of ever-frost from the Tachibana mountain ranges. “You don’t even know what you’re talking about.” He’s right ; Juza doesn’t. The silence has Settsu calm down a bit, though. He shrugs. “I mean it’s all most people want. Little bit of fun. No strings attached.”

It could be fun. Juza could see the appeal. He’s not sure it’s for him, though : not with his blood and especially not with what that blood allows him to do. It would be too easy to accidentally imprint, knowing now how random that process can be.

“I mean it’s not like I haven’t dated before,” Settsu huffs. “I can do more than a little fun for an afternoon.”

Juza’s not sure why this is the conversation they’re having. How Settsu isn’t teeming with humiliation just talking about it escapes him.

“Sure,” Juza says. “Are you leaving or not?”

Settsu clicks his tongue. “Yeah, yeah, fine.”

He doesn’t move from the doorstep.

“Are you leaving or not?”

“That sand from the textbook. The stuff that glows.”

“What about it?”

“How much time would it take for you to make that?”

“No one in the kingdom has had good star sand for months. Ya won’t find anyone selling it, even in the capital.”

“Really?” Settsu frowns. “What do you mean there isn’t any?”

“North shores haven’t had a star shower in months. Sand there’s dried up.”

“What about stuff from the star shower just last night? Can’t you replace the sand with dirt or something? It’s still part of the earth, right?”

“Not even close to being the same thing, dumbass.”

“The fuck are you calling a dumbass?”

“You, obviously.”

“You fucking,” Settsu bites off the rest of what he clearly wants to say. He opens both his hands wide before clenching them. “Fine. Forget I even asked.” He stomps off for the gate. “Have a good fucking night.”

Juza watches the guy leave, momentarily caught by the small sparkle of something near Settsu’s ear, before he turns for the store and goes back inside. He locks up the front door and checks that the safe’s shut for the night, too. But, as he finishes up his chores, his thoughts inevitably turn to the star in his pocket and – more importantly – the sealing container now ready for him to unveil.

In the back of the shop, he lifts the bowl from the countertop and marvels at the small black stains along the bowl and table. The amethysts have lost some of the luster, too : just enough that it’s noticeable to a magick user but few others. He lifts the necklace out of the ashes and dusts it off lightly.

Checking that no one is in the shop – that Kumon or his mom isn’t peeping from either of the doors, he unclasps the latch of the star’s current holder and brings it out. The light of it glows strong enough to fill the workshop. He stares at its elegance as long as he can, chasing after every second, before the paranoia has him shrinking it back down to bobble size and trickling it into the small cylindrical metal box. He shuts the lid and latches it.

With trembling hands, he clasps the necklace around his neck.

Everything seems fine the next day. Juza wakes at dawn as he usually does, and he doesn’t even feel the need to check the container – lying out on his desk – before he heads downstairs for breakfast. He feels _normal_ almost, as if he’s not sitting on a secret. His mother seems to notice this, too. She smiles more radiantly at him during breakfast.

Kumon starts in on his second day of knitting : this day with more breaks. Yesterday was the main day of ‘punishment’ ; the rest will simply be atonement. And Juza helps his mom in the shop for the whole day.

Muku comes in towards the beginning of the day, asking after his mother’s arthritis-relieving supplements. It’s an order that Juza’s recently learned how to fulfill, and he takes Muku back into the workshop to show his cousin the basics of the recipe just because he knows Muku loves magick and sorely wishes he had been born a magick user like his auntie and cousins. Then, Muku rushes off into the house to keep Kumon company.

A few more repeat customers come in for their weekly medications.

Juza’s mom teases him when Sakuya – an old crush – comes in asking after ‘fortune telling’ magick. The real thing doesn’t exist in quite the way that Sakuya had been hoping, but Juza had sold him some tea leaves and slid him an extra beginner’s pamphlet on tea leaf reading for free.

“How sweet of you,” she had cooed. “Not charging for something like that.”

“Mom,” he had whined back. “It was a year ago.”

“You’re thirty-seven! A year isn’t that long.”

“Mom, please?”

Muku leaves in the early afternoon, thanking them for letting him stay for lunch. Then, Juza’s mother says her knees are hurting again today, and she excuses herself up to her bedroom for some tea and a nap. With the shop quiet, Juza works by the cauldron to make a good honey for her future tea times : something similar to his aunt’s arthritis medicine.

He’s stirring the wild blueberry sugar in when the store’s bell rings.

“I’ll be right with you!” Juza calls up to the front.

He just needs to finish dissolving the sugar, then he can lift the cauldron up from the fire a bit and let it simmer until he’s done with the customer. Small footsteps on the wooden floors tell him that the customer’s found the archway to the back and is curiously watching. He tries his best to ignore the scrutiny and reaches for the pinch of ginger powder. He tosses it in and slowly stirs.

The footsteps come into the workshop, and Juza stiffens.

“Customers aren’t allowed back-” he cuts himself off when he sees that it’s Settsu. He stares for a moment until Settsu’s reached his side and peering down into the cauldron. “What are _you_ doing here?”

“Can’t a guy just fucking window shop?” Settsu snaps.

“Customers aren’t allowed back here. Go back up front.”

Settsu, predictably, ignores him. “Ah, your thing’s gonna burn if you don’t stir.”

Juza’s attention snaps back to the cauldron. He hates that Settsu’s right. He stirs gently with the spoon and raises the cauldron’s chain up : puts the lid on the fire for a few moments to suffocate it back down to a small size. He checks the simmer.

“Okay, I’m done for now. What do ya want?”

“To hang, I guess. You got a spare chair?”

“No.”

This provokes a small sigh, and Settsu sets off to the front of the store. Juza would think that Settsu’s done bothering him, but he knows better. Sure enough, Settsu comes back a few seconds later carrying the stool from the sales counter.

“You can’t bring that back here.”

“Sure, big guy.”

Settsu sets the stool right down beside Juza.

“No, I mean,” Juza fumbles when Settsu raises a particularly unimpressed eyebrow at him, “Ya really can’t. I’m no good yet. Even Mom needs protective charms to be around the cauldron.”

“Well, can’t you just give me a few charms?”

“We don’t have them just _laying around_. They’re expensive to make.”

Settsu glances at the cauldron. Juza realizes in that moment just how old their family cauldron is. His mom hasn’t changed it during his lifetime, at the very least. Stains and old residue from old concoctions stick to the metal, making it sticky. The bottom’s burnt out from the fire, and the hinges of the chain are rusted through. Juza glances around the rest of the workshop. He’d never noticed before, but it is all old. And Settsu’s from the city : where wealth makes so much brand-new.

A bead of discomfort begins to pool on his forehead. He wipes his face and stirs the honey one last time before putting out the fire.

“I’ll set a timer,” he mutters and finds one of the pocket watches his mother had gotten charmed to ring like a bell once its hands meet, signaling the end of the wait.

Settsu watches him twist the hands to thirty minutes and pocket the watch. When Juza turns back to him, though, he immediately turns his head away and picks up the small book on the counter next to his stool. It’s Juza’s notebook of different tricks and reminders for his magick studies.

He lets Settsu page through it for a moment.

“Why’d ya come back?”

Settsu doesn’t answer immediately. He pauses on a page and slowly opens up one of the pouches on the inside of his cloak, pulling out a diamond earring. He sets the book down on the counter with the earring, too. Juza frowns in confusion. He’s not _giving_ Juza his diamond earring. Is he?

“Bored,” Settsu says simply. “You wanna go up to your room again?”

“I’m watching the store. And I’m not having sex with you.”

“I wasn’t asking for that!” Settsu spits back at him. “Gods. Fucking drop that, okay?”

Juza shrugs and swats Settsu off the stool so he can carry it back to the register. Closing is soon, admittedly, but he won’t tell Settsu that. The sooner he’s gone again, the better. He takes a seat and opens up a record book to make sure he wrote Muku’s pick-up down.

Settsu floats into the front after him. He skims some of the few medicines and sands on display about the shop, reading their tag. Juza eyes him warily when he starts handling the heavier glass jars of their pricier sands.

“Don’t forget your earring,” Juza finally breaks the silence. It’s a little awkward to do. He’s not used to being the one to speak first.

“What?” Settsu asks. He sets the jar of sand back. “No, I gave you that.”

“Don’t be stupid. I’m not taking something like a diamond.”

“ _You_ don’t be stupid. I don’t wear it anyways, and I can always buy another one.”

Juza grits his teeth at that. He doesn’t know anyone who can just buy a diamond on a whim. Those sorts of things take years of saving.

“I don’t need it.”

Settsu shrugs. “Keep it anyway. I don’t need it, either. Might save your mom some trouble, who knows.”

Juza wants to argue this further. They don’t need charity, and especially they don’t need the charity of some swordsman who's decided he has a passing interest in meeting a dragon. Settsu comes back over to the counter, and Juza keeps his mouth shut.

“Don’t you need to lock up?” Settsu asks. “Closing’s like now, innit?”

“You’re right. Customers should leave.”

“Lucky for me I ain’t a customer.”

And that’s the start of Settsu coming by every late afternoon and staying until after dinner. It’s infuriating how easily it happens.

Juza would have expected some sort of refusal from his mother : some sort of solidarity with him on this issue of keeping a former royal swordsman out of the house and away from him. But she seems to adore Settsu and begins to be the one to invite Settsu to stay for dinner rather than Settsu simply hanging around until it’s too late to get him to leave.

Kumon doesn’t like it any more than Juza does. He glares daggers at Settsu every meal, and the two often fight after dinner over whether or not Settsu’s allowed to come back again the next day. No matter how bad the fights get, Settsu finds his way in through the door the very next afternoon. It’s infuriating.

But it also gradually becomes something that Juza expects. The days where Settsu runs late become nerve-wracking rather than hopeful. And, then, Settsu starts to bring things with him. It takes roughly three days for Settsu to figure out that Juza has a sweet tooth, and then, every time he’s late after that, it’s because he’s come with a donut from the bakery for Juza.

His mom teases him about this, too, which is more embarrassing than it is anything else.

The times when Juza’s mom asks Juza to go out looking for ingredients under the different phases of the moon or during certain weather patterns, Settsu inevitably trails after him. The first time – when Juza’s out to the pixies’ fields to farm the river for gemstones – Settsu stays behind a good many meters.

When the pixies swarm him, stinging and screaming, Settsu crowds Juza’s back, having figured out that the pixies leave Juza alone. After that, Settsu stays right on his heels at all times.

“Fuck,” Settsu sighs. “The pixie fields _again_?”

Juza shrugs, lacing up his boots. He has absolutely no problem with it. The pixies have never tried to mention the star to Settsu or his mother, and they still leave him alone. As far as he’s concerned, this is the better of the favors his mom asks of him.

“If ya hadn’t whacked at their bushes with your sword, they wouldn’t hate ya so much.”

“How the fuck was I supposed to know?”

Juza shrugs. “It’s okay. They hate me, too.”

“Bullshit. They never swarm you.”

“That’s ‘cause they’re scared,” Juza admits. “I’m a dragon, remember?”

Settsu goes a little quiet like he _has_ forgotten somehow, which is inanely odd. The entire gig for why he’s here is because Juza’s a dragon, or so Juza had been under the assumption. Maybe it’s not that.

“Are pixies scared of dragons?” Settsu finally asks.

“Dunno.”

It’s not so bad having Settsu come with anymore. He pulls his weight : helps Juza gather what he needs plus a little extra. Juza’s mom loves the extra pair of hands and extra back for added traveling storage.

They peel their boots off at the water line and wade into the waters of the river, swirling with the red and yellow leaves of autumn. Just yesterday, they had collected a few baskets of the leaves for drying and storing in the shed. Now, they have a different prize.

Another thing about Settsu – something that _actually_ irritates Juza – is how quickly he’s picked up some of the magick his mother teaches. He’s better than Juza at finding the ingredients now, better than Juza at prepping them for storage and for prepping them for magick use. He’s even better than Juza at improvising on ingredients. This is what really tugs at Juza’s insecurities, but, for now, he tries to tell himself that it’s okay. Within a year, Settsu will grow bored, surely, of their tiny breakfasts and lackluster dinners and go back to his bustling city life.

“Oi.”

Juza grunts in response. He reaches for a small speck of sapphire.

“Hyodo.”

“What?”

“Look up.”

Juza snaps his eyes up to see whatever it is that’s so important. Two strong hands shove at his shoulders hard and, caught off-guard, he goes down into the river. The water feel cold on his face, and it rushes past quick enough that it’s hard to keep his eyes open. He breaks the surface and quick steals a breath of air.

Settsu snickers.

Juza tackles him into the river. They waste the next hour playing in the waters, chasing after each other and dragging each other down under the river’s rippled surface. They get home still wet and, apologizing to Juza’s mom for not collecting nearly as much as they easily could have – and her forgiving them through her giddy smiles – they share a bath with Kumon to clean off the mud caked on their legs.

That night is one of the first nights Settsu stays at their place throughout the evening. Settsu makes a claim at the dinner table about running out of money for the inn room he’s been renting. Whether or not that’s entirely true isn’t something that Juza’s mom seems interested in pursuing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i had a map planned out for this fic, but im not sure where im going with this anymore?? we shall see... mostly bc i wanted to get this done in a day, but im moving onto my third day of writing already. i might have to return to a different fic to finish a chapter for that before returning here. we'll see!! thanks to everyone who's commented or left kudos <333 you guys give me the will to continue updating jfdhkg


	3. treasury of stars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> upon realizing the consequences of hoarding a star, juza sets off to the north shores. a certain swordsman follows, and they travel together until running into two members employed by the royal family : castle sous-chef omi and royally-patronized alchemist sakyo.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy new years!! enjoy 10k of one idiot in love with another idiot. special thanks to najita tetsuo for writing my least favorite book on premodern japan (visions of virtue in tokugawa japan: the kaitokudou merchant academy of osaka) and letting me borrow his absolutely horrific writing style. i didn't get to proofread this because it's so long, but hopefully there aren't too many mistakes!!
> 
> uhh when banri calls sakyo a ring kisser it's like bootlicker cuz royal subjects, y'know, kiss the king's ring hfkjdhgkdj

Weeks pass. Settsu’s birthday comes and goes, and the bastard turns twenty year old. Crowing about being in his twenties with Juza in his ‘essential’ teen years is nonstop, and it grates on Juza’s ears. The only keeping from a full-blown fight happening over the living room tea table is Juza’s mom stern voice corralling them back into their pillows.

Hyodo’s mom offers Settsu a small protective talisman for his birthday : a small something to let him stay at the cauldron while Juza works. Juza’s not sure if he’s thrilled about this development. Kumon begrudgingly bakes the anise cake to get out of spending his money on a gift. His own gift to Settsu is a bit of incense shaved from rosewood and dipped in nectar from a few of the cactus flower petals he had ordered from a kingdom far to the southwest. It was an expensive few petals to get, but he hopes it’ll pay off.

Settsu asks him what it does, and Juza keeps quiet. He’s not sure if his mom can smell it or not, so he just tells Settsu he’ll find out when he uses it : and to _not_ use it while with others.

Based on Settsu’s mood and awkwardness around him the next day, it worked according to the recipe’s notes.

Juza’s goal is to show his mother the star before his own birthday comes. It’s soon, which isn’t doing him many favors. With Settsu’s birthday on the ninth of the month, the twenty-seventh is practically the same date. The bright side to this, though, is that this cloud of shame and secrecy will go away so much faster.

He waits until Settsu leaves for a day’s trip up to the next few towns and Kumon’s out with Muku that he approaches his mom. He does it when they’re still setting up shop in the morning, bagging orders for pick-up and prepping some common ingredients for any impromptu requests. This way, he thinks, if it doesn’t go well, they can think about it for a few hours before having to _really_ talk.

“Mom?”

“Hmm?” she hums. Her focus is on filling a bang with star sand for warding off spider sprites.

“Can I,” Juza swallows. “I wanna show you… my hoard.”

She looks up a little surprised, and her pouring wavers a little. Some sand spills onto the counter. Juza helps her clean it off the counter and move it to the ‘dud’ pile in the corner.

“Thanks, honey.”

“Yeah.”

The sand jar is corked and pushed back to its shelf, and the bag of sand tied with a bit of ribbon. Then, she pulls up the cauldron-side stool and takes a seat.

“You’re comfortable with showing me?”

“I want to be.”

He reaches for the necklace – he’s taken to wearing it lately, mostly because he likes the design of the box he made and the way it sometimes smells like the chamomile his mom had imbued on it – and her eyes trace the movement. They light up in understanding.

It feels like an oddly important process, even when it’s just them alone together. The weight of the chain feels heavier now : the latch a little harder to open. But it does open, and he lifts the lid. The glow has his mom lean in curiously until he raises his hand and shakes the star out.

It lands in his palm small, then slowly swells up to its true size. It floats over his palm shining impossibly beautifully : shifting its colors between a deep clear sky blue and deep purple. There’s a little twirl to the way it floats, too.

His mom stands up from the stool and, slowly with careful movements like she’s gauging his reaction, approaches. Juza’s proud when this doesn’t bother him in the slightest.

“Is this?”

“’s a star.”

She outstretches her hand just a little to feel its warmth.

“I’ve never seen a star,” she murmurs. “It’s gorgeous.”

“One day,” he says, “I wanna give it to you. Have you make somethin’ nice with it. But I can’t yet. Feels… too important to me. I don’t wanna give it away yet.”

“Oh, honey, I understand. I really do, sweetie.”

He frowns. Her eyes are starting to tear up. This isn’t the reaction he had been expecting. He lowers the star, leaves it to the side on the counter, as he holds his mom. She shakes a little in his hold. Gently, her arms encircle his shoulders to hold him back.

“Mom?”

“I don’t want to tell you,” she whispers into his chest. “I wanna let you keep it and be happy. I really, really do.”

Dread settles in his stomach. “Tell me what?”

“I have a book somewhere,” she gestures loosely to the shelf. “Give me a moment. I can find it.”

He lets her takes as long as she needs. When she does find her strength, she wipes her eyes and turns to the bookshelf. It takes her a bit : finding this book. The one she finally pulls out and turns back to him with is old and weathered with a torn cover and its corner protectors missing. She holds it out to him, and he carefully accepts it. ‘Celestial Bodies and Their Properties : An Expert’s Guide to the Intricacies of Star Magick’ is the cover’s title.

“It might be a little difficult of a read,” she tells him, “but there’s some important notes in there. The whole thing’s annotated. You should read it.”

He cracks the cover and hears the spine split. The table of contents looks just as verbose as its title. ‘Star Formation,’ ‘Processes and Types of Fall,’ ‘The Magick Properties of Stars,’ ‘Interactions with Other Unique Strands of Recipe Ingredients,’ ‘Storage : Properly and Improperly Done,’ they’re all listed out. He pages through the introduction.

It’s too difficult for him to understand even with his mother’s annotations. He’s always been bad with textbooks this way.

“Where do I start?” he asks.

His mom takes it from him for a moment and checks the table of contents again before flipping to ‘The Magick Properties of Stars.’ As she pages through the chapter, Juza catches glimpses of diagrams. Some of them look more like diagrams of snowflakes than of stars. He glances at the star floating ethereally over their counter’s old wood. Surely it’s not as unique as each snowflake is.

“A lot of this is theory-based,” his mom mumbles. “It’s so complex that no one outside of royal magick users would ever need to study this. It’s not as if just any magick user is able to predict and capture stars and their fragments so easily. Even I didn’t retain much of this.”

“Theory?”

“This book’s author was a pixies specialist, not a celestial specialist. Of course, this book argues that the similarities between starlight emission and pixie glow emission might indicate a link or power distribution. I’m not sure how much of that I buy, but its factual bases are much more solid.”

She seems to find the page she was looking for. “Here!” she exclaims and hands him back the book. “Now, it might be hard to read, all things considered. I did give you a small vial of starlight when you were younger to help you build a resistance.”

“It’s in my desk,” he blurts out.

“Oh, good! I had thought you had lost it. Well, that makes things a little less worrisome. But do give it a read, alright? I’ll finish up the prep work for today. Come talk once you’ve read? And make sure you hide the star before the customers come.”

Hiding the star is the first thing he does. Once it’s secure around his neck in its container again, he settles down on a stool with the book.

A glance at the section subhead doesn’t fill him with confidence : ‘Dragons and Celestial Bodies.’ What follows is much, much worse.

_This book has already covered to great length the intricate links of celestial bodies and a handful of different Earthen creatures : the pixies, the selkies of the oceans, the flora that absorb it. From an alchemist’s perspective, these portions of the book may seem extravagant in their constructions of a potentially arguable legal order with which to organize otherwise chemically-structured natural distinctions. Of course, taking into consideration the late Zen Kyuru’s theory of sub-microscopic structures, there lies the possibility that the aforementioned similarities may only be the result of coincidental sharing of these structures. The truth cannot be gleamed from our present situation of glasswork and alchemy._

_Yet, there lies one relationship not yet discussed in this book where the relationship between celestial bodies and Earthen creatures is starkly visible : that of the blood descendants of wyrms and amphitheres known now as ‘dragons.’_

_This relationship, first studied by Otomiya Shuu of the far Northern Tsukioka Kingdom, now part of the northern reaches of Tachibana, is at present understood to be one of the five major variations of ‘corruption’ that is observable at the magick level. While the other four corruptions involve the magick of Earthly bodies acting on other Earthly bodies (such as the predominantly studied ice elementals or the lesser known lycoris draconis or ‘dragon blood’ flowers’ resin), the interaction of celestial bodies with dragons is unmistakably extraterrestrial. It can be easily understood, then, why religious traditions were some of the first organizations to capitalize on this nature._

_Otomiya Shuu himself was a member of the Fae family of religious thoughts with studies both in the Seisen and Jou-jizen’nan Schools, and his studies reflect these biases. Dragons were only prevalent in minor mentions of Jou-jizen’nan texts, and none of these mentions seem to correlate to his thoughts on celestrial-dragon interactions. Instead, Otomiya seemed to borrow for his discussion on dragons an over-reliance on dragon’s blood’s similarity to the resin of the dragon blood flowers – featured heavily in Seisen texts – and presumably ran his tests only on the flowers due to the natural rarity of dragons in society._

_His theory of ‘corruption’ and its addition to what was then the four natural corruptions of the world thus borrows from the Seisen School’s understanding of the dragon blood corruption of human blood._

Juza flips a few pages, the words blurring together.

_Practicing his magickally empirical approach to the theoretical practitioners of the kingdom’s court magick users, Otomiya lectured formally on the natural laws proposed by Jou-jizen’nan’s founder Kusa’aki no Kouyou and the pages of Chitatsu-Heike-I-Dou, which he favored for its basis in medical empiricism. His seminars involved, according to the transcripts now available of the court records, magick experimentation on ‘the blood of dragons’ (lit. ‘chitatsu,’ a word that was confusingly used for both dragon’s blood and dragon blood) through the use of star fragments._

Juza flips the pages. An annotation from his mother catches his eye : a small star with ‘ _Might try starlight vial_ ’ written next to it.

 _Precision was likely sacrificed in favor of attaining the patronage of the court for his studies, but Otomiya’s results would indicate that the gradual corruption that resulted from the exposure of dragon blood (and, presumably, dragon’s blood) and star fragments did not occur from the flowers (and blood) to the star but_ instead in the opposite direction. _The discovery that the ‘star,’ popularly believed by both magick users and alchemists to be of complete benevolence, could incite corruption was, of course, monumental._

A little further down the page.

_All of the Tsukioka house’s magick users seemingly sought out to empirically study the manners in which this corruption functioned. Much of this activity stemmed from the patronage of the royal family whose members were notoriously commonly born as dragons. Other interested parties included the Jou-jizen’nan School’s acting patriarch Kusa’aki no Touji, as well as members from the lower Sumeragi family branches, who believed the information to be beneficial for supporting their attempt at supplanting the Sumeragi head and king of their own kingdom. Few records of these studies still exist, but what writing we have about them tells us that they discovered a gradual exposure procedure – much like the exposure of milk maids to cowpox – would help to prevent corruption from star fragments and star-imbued magick objects._

Juza sets the book down.

A bell from the front door signals the customer’s exit from the building. The clock ticks, and his mom’s quill scratches the parchment of their record-keeping book.

“Mom?”

The quill pauses. “Did you finish reading?”

“I… I think.”

She gets up from the sales counter and makes her way back into the workshop, peeks her head around the corner. Juza’s face must indicate his distress, for her features soften into her gentle ‘motherly’ look.

“How much did you understand of it?”

Juza doesn’t know. “What’s Jou-Jizan’nan?”

“Don’t worry about all of the names. Jou-Jizan’nan was a school of religious thought way back when that tried to categorize living things by the elements and institute a hierarchy of elemental importance. Among other things.” He blinks at her. “What _really_ matters is the part on how the tests by the Tsukioka court magick users worked.”

“Exposure to stars slowed corruption.”

“You see why I gave you the starlight vial so young?”

“I think.” He touches his necklace. “What happens if it corrupts me?”

“Well. There’s never been anything found on that. Just the flowers.”

“But you think it’ll work the same.”

“I think I wanted to take every precaution.” She eyes the necklace as he holds it in his fist. “But I’ve raised dragon blood long enough to see the similarities in them and you and Tsumugi. I think it’ll work the same.”

“How long?”

“Who knows? Maybe it will only be towards the end of your lifetime. But remember, now. The bulk of what we know on the topic was about star fragments and starlight only. There’s never been a recorded instance of a whole star being used : only its weakened states.”

Juza hesitates. He stares at the book on the counter, still open. The text swims under his gaze.

“What should I do?”

“I won’t make you do anything,” his mom promises.

“But I should!” Juza protests. “Right? Corruption usually ends in violence. I don’t wanna hurt you or Kumon.”

“My suggestion would be that you learn how to revoke your imprint and take the star somewhere to sow into the land. Maybe you could bring back some of its blessed items for the shop’s inventory. That should be a low enough concentration to be safe. There will always be other things for you to hoard.”

“But I shouldn’t hoard.”

“Oh, honey,” his mom sighs. “Hoarding itself isn’t bad. But it _is_ something to take care with. Don’t lose sight of the natural cycle of life and death and creation and destruction, but I’ve told you before : giving immortality to the things you love – to let them live as long as you do – is a beautiful gift. Don’t be ashamed of that.”

Juza can’t respond to that. He agrees with his mom partially. Another part of him is so truly terrified. He imprinted without even knowing it on something that just from its proximity could make him lose his mind. He can’t be trusted with this yet.

“I should leave immediately.”

“Immediately?” his mom echoes.

“The north shores.” It’s the first thing that comes to mind when he thinks of stars, after all. “I’ll take it there. And I’ll come back with more star sand for you.”

“What about your brother?” she asks after him.

He sweeps through the door of the shop, heading back to their house. She hobbles out after him.

“Tell him I couldn’t wait.”

“But,” she stumbles a little over the door frame. “What about Banri-kun?”

Juza’s already up the stairs.

“What ‘bout him?”

“Shouldn’t you wait for him, too? You can explain it to him and your brother tonight at dinner.”

She comes up the stairs after him and lingers at the doorway to his bedroom. Juza drags his traveling pack out of the closet and starts to change his clothes. He’ll need something heavier in its fabric to keep him warm up north, especially with winter creeping in with the next few months. It shouldn’t take more than two months, but one never knows when traveling.

“Just tell him what you tell Kumon.”

“Juza, honey, you don’t _have_ to leave.”

He frowns down at his pack : throws a few of his charmed containers into it. “I do,” he insists. He doesn’t want to. “I wanna prove it.”

“Prove what, honey?”

“I’m more than a dragon.”

“Oh, _honey_ ,” his mom sounds so upset. “You don’t have to prove that to anyone. Your brother and I have known that for decades. Banri-kun knows that, too, I’m sure. It’s been weeks since he’s lasted mentioned anything about it.”

“I need to prove it to me,” he tries to explain. “I’ve felt… sick for so long. Even when I’m not thinking about it, it’s ‘cause I know where it is. Anyone could control me right now. It could already be corrupting me, and we wouldn’t know ‘cause no one knows how that works.”

His mom watches him pull his vest and traveling skirt on : grab a coat and a cloak from his closet and fold them into the pack. He’ll need some food before he goes from the pantry and a few items from the shop, but it doesn’t take a lot for a dragon to travel. His scales will protect him better than any sword or shield.

Juza looks at his mom waiting in the doorway. She seems small and old standing there.

“Alright,” she accepts quietly. “Let’s go get you some food. And I insist you take the book, too. Familiarize yourself with the concepts better.”

“‘Kay.”

Fetching the poinsettias for Hyodo’s mom ended up not being that bad of a trip, all things considered. There were a couple of idiots that tried to steal his wallet off him on the road, but Lucy had helped him deal with that issue. Banri watches the afternoon sky as he walks down the dirt road.

It’s a pretty, deep blue today in between the puffy white clouds. Banri can imagine ages past when amphitheres used to fly through skies like this. His mind then trails to Hyodo, and a small, secret smile plays out on his lips. Hyodo’s a nice thought to have on the mind.

At first, it had been just the muscles and the sheer strength the guy had. Getting Lucy grabbed right of his grip just by someone’s bare hands, that had been a thrill. Banri hadn’t come around hard, per say, but he definitely had his hands down his pants that night in the inn room. Damn, Banri lets himself laugh aloud, seeing as he’s alone.

But then the guy turned out to be an absolute fucking idiot : bad at magick, bad at being a dragon, bad at being around people, bad with household things. It was like a whole package that just spoke to being an antithesis to everything Banri’s experienced in his life. If it had been anyone else, Banri thinks, he might have killed the guy in a jealous rage. But with it being Hyodo, all he wanted to do was stick around.

They’re getting closer, too. It’s taken a while for the big guy’s walls to come down. They’ve shared a bed a few times now at night when Banri lied about his wallet running low – Banri had the displeasure of learning that Hyodo snores like no one could fucking imagine – and, with this new charm around his neck, Banri can actually hang out around the cauldron while Hyodo works through his small list of feasible recipes.

He can see it on Hyodo’s face, too, sometimes, that the guy doesn’t mind him so much. He’s willing to play more with Banri now : like they’re just two teenage boys in a town together having fun in their youth.

If Banri plays his cards right, he might get Hyodo to kiss him by winter.

When he gets to the next town – the last one before Hyodo’s town – he stops by the bakery there and buys a few of the cream breads that he knows Hyodo likes. Banri can envision it now : getting through the front door in the last half hour of the shop’s open hours and offering the pastries to Hyodo. He can already see the sparkle in Hyodo’s eyes.

Damn, Banri’s in a good mood.

The giddiness only picks up when Hyodo’s house’s fence comes into sight and he saunters down the little stone path up the shop door. He opens the door, and the bell chimes happily.

“Hyodo,” he calls before stopping short. “Ms. Hyodo, sorry.” He glances back into the shop, trying to see through the back shelf into the workshop. “Is Hyodo not working the shop?”

Hyodo’s mom wrings her hands nervously. “Not right now,” she says. “Here, let me help you with the bags and wagon.”

“Ah, don’t worry about it. Mind if I unload later? I got something for him.” He starts walking for the door. “Is he in his bedroom?”

“Uh,” she sputters behind him, “Banri-kun, wait!”

“Yeah?”

Banri turns around and straightens his back a little as she comes up to him. He wildly tries to think if he’s done anything in the last day that would get him in trouble. Did Hyodo rat him out about the cauldron fire yesterday?

“Juza’s not home right now.”

“Oh.” He’s confused as to why this would make her nervous. “When’s he coming back?”

“I… I don’t know, I’m sorry.”

“… Like a few hours, though, right?”

She takes in a deep breath. “He’s headed out for the north shores.”

Banri’s mind goes blank. “What?” he doesn’t mean to say it aloud, but it’s all he can think.

“Something very important came up. I hope you can understand for his sake. He couldn’t wait.”

“Not even a few hours?” Banri spits back and then feels bad when he makes her flinch. “That’s months away.”

“I know, I’m sorry. Kumon hasn’t gotten back, either. I was going to tell both of you at the dinner table.”

“When’d he leave?”

“Just a few hours ago. Really, please forgive him. He’ll be back. If you’re willing to stay in town, it’ll only be until late winter. I’d really love to have you around. You can have Juza’s bedroom, too. I’m sure the inn must be draining you of all your money.”

It’s a kind offer, but Banri can’t take it. His head is spinning a little. How _dare_ Hyodo just fucking _leave_ like what they have is able to be put on the back burner for a bit. Banri’s furious : maybe more than even that.

“Fuck!” he hisses. “Your son has no fucking manners,” he spits and storms off towards the house.

How _dare_ Hyodo do this to him. Who the fuck did he think he was? Does he think he’s better than Banri just because he’s a dragon? Does Hyodo think that Banri’s _negligible_ in comparison to whatever super-fucking-important thing came up within the last twelve hours?

Banri bangs through the door to the house and launches the pack of cream puffs towards the kitchen counter. It hits a mug, and, falling into the ceramic sink, Banri hears it shatter. He can’t be assed to care.

At the end of his fit, he finds himself, of course, in Hyodo’s bedroom. Even the lingering smell of the candles on the desk pisses him off a little. Hyodo must have burnt them early in the morning. The whole room spells like sugar and cinnamon.

Unbidden, the memory of his birthday gift from Hyodo – those damned incense sticks magicked to give decidedly ‘good’ dreams to those in the room – comes to mind. Too many of those dreams had taken place in this very room, holding Hyodo down into the quilt, being held down on the quilt. What kind of person gives someone a gift like that before they’re even together?

Banri ends up burying his face into Hyodo’s pillow and letting the familiar scent wash over him. He doesn’t know if this counts as a break-up or not. It’s definitely a ‘no,’ isn’t it?

Maybe Banri won’t take a fucking no.

The idea that hits him then seems a good one.

He changes into some fresh clothes. He doesn’t have the time for a shower if he wants to catch up to Hyodo before the day’s over, but he can at least try to smell decent and not like he’s trekked a whole day’s journey already. He might ask for some balm from Hyodo’s mom. He hadn’t been wearing the protective talisman on the journey, and he fetches that from the bowl on Hyodo’s desk to clasp around his neck.

He goes down into the kitchen to grab a bit of food and finds Hyodo’s mom at the sink picking up the shards of the mug. Banri doesn’t feel too hot about that.

“I’m sorry,” he says, making his way down the last few steps. “I got so mad ; I threw the pastries.”

“I understand,” she says quietly. “I put them in the ice box for now.” She looks over her shoulder at him : takes in the bag and the clean clothes. “You’re going after him, aren’t you?”

Banri’s not sure if she’ll get mad if he tells the truth. She did say that it was something important : important enough it couldn’t wait. Surely that doesn’t mean he’s not allowed to go?

“You can take them with you to give him once you find him.”

“You’re not gonna stop me?”

“Of course not,” she shakes her head and wipes her hands off. She moves over to their bread box and pulls out a whole loaf for him, gets some jam out of the cupboards and some salted meats from the cloche. “I believe in letting people have their freedom. I tried so hard to give my sons that growing up : even Juza, despite the risks. Especially him. I wanted him to grow up knowing how to let go and trust.”

“So he doesn’t go all dragon and kill whoever steals from his hoard?”

She winces. “Juza wouldn’t do that.”

“I think all dragons do that,” Banri shrugs. He goes over to help her wrap some of the meats. “It’s not bad, I don’t think, though. Humans go to war because royalty they don’t know want land. Can’t dragons kill for what they love?”

“Even so,” Hyodo’s mom says, “consent is an important thing to give to people. I’m so proud of him for not imprinting on Kumon or I yet. He’s clearly learned some things about loving without imprinting. Now it’s time for him to learn how to imprint and un-imprint freely.”

Banri stops.

“Hyodo has a hoard?”

Hyodo’s mom hesitates. She glances nervously at the sword on Banri’s hip.

“It’s not… something that a dragon advertises. Dangerous things can happen to a dragon whose hoard is well-known.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

It’s the first time Banri's received a scathing look from the woman. It makes him feel a little smaller, even though her head’s only at his shoulder for height.

“No, I,” he bites his lip, “I know. I heard some… horrible things in the royal guard.”

“Well, then maybe you have an idea.”

Banri can’t help the curiosity. “What’s in Hyodo’s hoard?” he asks.

He’s not sure if he could take it if it was someone else. Not that Hyodo’s shown interest in people before, but Banri’s a little nervous all the same. It could be that guy with the pink hair who comes in asking about tea leaves all the time. Hyodo seems embarrassed around him too much for comfort.

The less horrible option is that it’s something small and dumb and yet got into Hyodo’s hoard before Banri could even win his affection.

“That’s not for me to say,” Hyodo’s mom evades. “He may feel confident enough to tell you if you ask. If he doesn’t, please respect his secrecy. It protects him.”

“Alright,” Banri says, but he’s not happy about it.

Hyodo’s mom helps him pack some of the sweetening balm, along with some wayfinding sand – apparently if he tosses some in the air it will sparkle in the direction he ought to travel to find whatever it is he wants to find – and a small, dark red jewel that barely gleams even in the bright afternoon sunlight. She tells him it’s a bloodstone : that, if the worst happens, it may help him and Hyodo. Banri doesn’t ask what she means by that. He figures Hyodo’ll know.

They say goodbye at the fence.

She picks up his hand and presses a small kiss to it.

“Ah,” he laughs, “I should be the one doing that to you. I’m the dashing swordsman, after all.”

She chuckles a little, too, and offers hers. He gives a gentle, honest kiss to her knobby knuckles and deep blue veins.

“He may end up needing your help,” she says quietly in the moment that passes. The breeze in the trees, shaking the autumn leaves, almost drowns her words out. “Please give it to him. I know you like him in your own way. I’m sure it’ll make him stronger to have a partner who has his back.”

“Ah,” Banri feels his face go a little hot. “Yeah, uh… yeah.” He had forgotten that his and Hyodo’s slow attraction is something that others can see.

“Travel safe.”

“Got it. We’ll be back before spring comes.”

Juza stops for the night in the hollow of the oak forest to the northwest of town. It’s well-protected from the wind and from the road. He’ll have no fears about falling asleep for the night, save for the bears or other forest creatures that might stumble across him. There’re also usual magick dangers of any forest, but he has little care for those small dangers.

He gathers a bunch of the autumn leaves to provide a buffer between the cold, hard ground and the quilt he drapes over them as a sleeping mat. It’s the first night of his journey, so he can settle his stomach with just the grapes he took with him from the kitchen. The true advantage of traveling as a magick user, of course, is how much water his canteen can hold once he’s magicked it to hold up to ten times its physical capacity.

He watches the stars for any irregularities in their sparkle before falling asleep soon after moonrise.

He’s dead to the world for a few hours.

And then something heavy slams into his chest. His scales come out in time – they always do – but Juza’s startled awake in the most unpleasant way. Scrambling up and off of the quilted leaf pile, he braces himself for whatever attack will follow.

Settsu watches him unamusedly. Juza freezes.

“How’d you find me?”

“Your mom told me where ya were headed. Any idiot would go this way.”

“Go back,” Juza snaps. He’s not in the mood to deal with Settsu. “Stay the fuck out of this. It’s family business.”

“Newsflash, asshole,” Settsu sneers, “I’ve been living with your family for a while now. Count me in.”

“You’ve stayed with us _two months_ ,” Juza sneers back. “You ain’t family for shit.”

Settsu draws his sword. “You wanna fucking say that again, dipshit?”

“I said y’ain’t family for _shit_.”

Settsu launches himself at Juza. In one single sweeping move, Juza gets him pinned to the forest floor. Settsu struggles in his grip.

“Fuck! Get the fuck off of me, you fucking brute.”

“Don’t try to attack me.”

“I’ll attack you all I want!” Settsu hollers, trying to kick his way out. He grows angrier the more Juza’s scales come out to defend against his kicks. “You fucking _left_.”

“I wonder why.”

A claw-like hand goes to scratch at his face. When scales come out there, too, Settsu snags a bit of Juza’s hair. That, Juza’s scales can’t protect against. He howls in pain when Settsu damn near pulls it out. He socks Settsu in the jaw. The grip loosens.

Juza pushes himself to his feet.

“Don’t be a jackass,” his spits. “Go home.”

“You’re keeping secrets from me,” Settsu argues. He mirrors Juza and stands up, unsteadily swaying from the lingering dizziness of Juza’s hard punch. “Thought we were partners or some shit by now.”

“As if.”

“Hey, newsflash again, fucker. You don’t give people aphrodisiac incense sticks to ‘friends,’ okay? That was fucked up.”

“That’s not-” Juza feels like he’s been set on fire just with one sentence out of Settsu’s mouth. “That wasn’t the intent. Supposed to be for good dreams. Didn’t have to be sexual.”

“Either fucking way, dude. Just make me somethin’ like your brother did.”

“I did make you somethin.’”

Settsu sighs. “Fine, okay.” He walks off a little. “Fuck. Okay, bad start to this little adventure.”

Juza stomps back over to his quilt. Gods forbid he just get a decent night’s sleep to start the journey off with. It isn’t as if this will take months of sleeping out in the cold wilderness. He uses a bit of fire magick to get a campfire going. He might as well have tea.

After a few minutes, Settsu finally comes over and sits with him at the fire. They watch the kettle warm up and slowly start to steam.

“Why didn’t you just wait?” Settsu asks suddenly. He meets Juza’s eyes with his own : dark and serious. “Why didn’t you ask me to come with?”

Juza shifts. “It’s hard to explain. Not just anyone can know ‘bout it.”

“Look, I _know_ you’re a dragon. I know what dragons do. It doesn’t take a genius to figure it out.” Settsu pauses when Juza’s hands close into fists, but he presses on. “Why couldn’t you just trust me with that?”

“Why couldn’t _you_ wait a few months for me to come back?” Juza accuses.

“I,” Settsu flounders. He goes a little quiet. “Come on, I’m not pathetic,” he finally mumbles.

“Pathetic is coming after me because you couldn’t handle even the first day.”

“Shut up,” Settsu snaps. “I didn’t come after you because of that. I came because I was angry. Still am.”

“Dunno what for.”

“Open your fucking eyes. You just fucking left without telling me. I’m not going to get _sidelined_ like that.”

“Sorry you’re just learning that maybe my life doesn’t revolve around you.”

The squealing of the kettle interrupts the surely nasty retort out of Settsu’s mouth. Juza gets his mug out of his pack. When Settsu eyes him, clearly waiting for a second, Juza glares. Of course he didn’t pack two mugs for a one-person journey. Settsu sighs and watches him steep his tea.

Juza’s not an asshole, though. He lets Settsu have the second steep.

“It’s the thing ‘round your neck, innit?”

Juza snaps his head up from where he’s playing with the fire. Settsu nods to himself like Juza’s reaction confirmed his suspicion.

“Thought so. What is it?”

“None of your business.”

“Come on,” Settsu lowers the mug. “You told your mom, didn’t you?”

“You’re not my mom.”

Settsu frowns. “I’m just,” he sighs in a real frustrated way. “I’m just trying to help out. Thought I’d ask. Your mom said it might be good for you to be more open about things with people you can trust.”

“Not this.”

“Fine,” Settsu mutters into the mug. He takes his last sip and sets the mug down.

They stare up at the sky for a little. The moon climbs higher in the sky. Hours pass.

Eventually, they stomp out the fire with dirt, and Juza washes the mug out with a little bit of water. They leave it and the kettle out to dry.

The makeshift sleeping mat is harder to navigate. Settsu, brilliantly, reveals that he was planning on sharing with Juza and didn’t bring anything for himself. So, they end up curled together on the quilt – ends of it folded over their bodies – and the pair of them decidedly not relaxed.

“We’re getting a second blanket in the next town we go through,” Juza grumbles.

“‘s not that bad,” Settsu sighs. It rustles the small hairs at the nape of Juza’s neck, and he shivers. Settsu seems to find this amusing. “But yeah it’s only going to get colder here on out. We should have more layers.”

“I meant for _you_.”

Settsu cuddles closer, throws an arm around Juza’s waist. “You don’t like sharing?” he asks. Like an asshole.

“Fuck off.”

Settsu doesn’t say anything back. His quiet breathing warms Juza’s neck and the backs of his shoulders. In time, the longer Settsu holds him, warmth begins to pool in the places where they’re connected : along Juza’s back and at his waist where Settsu’s arm hangs. His front is still a little chilly : his chest and legs uncomfortably bare.

He rolls over to face Settsu. Settsu opens his eyes a bit and easily adjusts to Juza burrowing into his hold. This is a little better : a little warmer. The chilliness of autumn now hits his back, but it’s better than his front. If body heat is this comfortable, maybe they don’t need separate covers : just double for them as a pair.

“You cold?” Settsu asks. He wraps his arm a little tighter around Juza’s back and splays out his fingers like it’ll help him reach more. “We can leave the embers of the fire go through the night.”

“Don’t want anyone to find us,” Juza mumbles into the crook of Settsu’s collarbone. “Smoke’s bad.”

“Alright.”

Juza wakes to the smell of rain in the air. The quilt’s still dry, so he keeps his eyes closed and curls in a little closer to Settsu. A small groan comes from Settsu. Juza peeks an eye open and finds that, over the night, they’ve shifted their positions a bit. Now Settsu has his head tucked under Juza’s chin and his arms curled protectively in the small nook between their bodies : Juza’s the one with his arm around the other.

It’s a tempting thought to stay there and cuddle in the warm of their shared body heat for the rest of the morning. It is only dawn, after all, but it also might be a bit later, as the clouds staining the sky hide the horizon and obfuscate the sunlight.

But Juza slips out from the quilt – much to the grumbly displeasure of his bedmate – and starts the fire. If it’s going to rain, it’ll be better to get breakfast started now.

Settsu only wakes up once the tea’s brewed and Juza’s working on grilling some of the meats he had taken from the kitchen. A little bit of bacon with birch tea is an unorthodox breakfast, but it’s oddly satisfying here in the tree grove, sheltered from the road. Settsu pulls out a few bread buns that he says are cream breads though a little old by now. Juza wolfs them down all the same. Settsu curls his lip in disgust and keeps his comments to himself.

The rain begins to drizzle not long after.

“Which way are we headed?” Settsu asks, quickly throwing the quilt into its folded shape and stuffing it in his own bag. “There’s a town a ways north of here we can take shelter from the weather.”

“Sounds good.”

Their walk is soggy from their clothes to the earth their boots sink into as they walk. Juza will be lucky if he get the mud out of his skirt. Maybe he should have brought his mom’s old work pants instead.

“Don’t you know any magick for staying dry?” Settsu asks. “Only half-joking.”

“Only magick for curing corruption and protecting from fire,” Juza mutters. “Guess we’re not the best of people to have for day-to-day stuff.”

“Ah, not true. Your mom has a nice shop, you know. She could run a good business in the capital if she wanted.”

“She’d never wanna live somewhere busy.”

“Yeah,” Settsu muses. “She doesn’t seem like the type to like loud noises. I see where you get it.”

“Being quiet isn’t bad.”

“‘Course not. Kumon’s pretty different though, isn’t he? I’m surprised he’s not eager to run off to the city. He’d fit in real well.”

Juza shrugs. “Maybe he will when he’s older.”

They walk in silence a bit further. The roots of the trees they pass over save them from the mud but offer their own slipperiness under their heels : moss and lichens only making each step a little more treacherous.

“Your mom did magick before you, though, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Why didn’t she try to get hired at the castle? I know your shop doesn’t really look like much, but she’s really good at what she does, you know? She’d have no problem getting a couple thousand yen every season as patronage.”

“I’m thirty-seven, remember? She was in her early twenties when she had me.”

“So? I was twelve when I got in.”

Juza doesn’t actually know, then. She couldn’t have predicted that her firstborn would end up being something as inconvenient as a dragon at the time, and that’s her main reason, seemingly, for hating royalty as much as she does. Maybe there’s more to it than just him. Either way, he supposes it doesn’t matter. It was forty years ago.

“Dunno,” he answers. “Guess not everyone likes money more than living in peace.”

“You can get patronage from the castle and still live peacefully,” Settsu protests. A branch slaps him in the face, and he curses. Juza chuckles. “Tsumugi-san doesn’t live anywhere near the capital, and he still gets way more than a couple thousand a season.”

Juza slips off a root and hits his ass on a hard knob. Now it’s Settsu turn to burst out laughing.

“How do you know Tsumugi?” Juza asks, picking himself back up. Damn, that hurt. He rubs his ass sorely. “Didn’t think they’d have their students meeting a dragon.”

“Ah, they don’t really. I got into a lotta trouble in the academy, so I met him on one of my escapades.”

“Escapades?”

“Yeah,” Settsu cackles to himself. “Head alchemist really hated my guts because of it. Nah, I met Tsumugi-san when I stole one of the display swords from the halls of the castle. Which is now Lucy.”

Juza eyes the sword at Settsu’s hip. “ _That’s_ a display sword from the palace?”

“Yep. She doesn’t look like much, I know, but she was made by one of the famous blacksmiths from that old kingdom Tsukioka. It’s why her steel is so lightweight and will never rust nor dull.”

“They make swords like that?”

“With a _lot_ of magick,” Settsu winks. “Maybe you’ll give me a sword even better one day.”

Juza ignores the innuendo. “Yeah right.”

“You can try her out if you want someday,” Settsu offers. He slips over a root and catches himself on Juza’s shoulder. “I can teach you some basics of swordsmanship.”

“Pass. I’ll end up killing someone.”

“Doubt. But uh, anyway, Tsumugi-san’s a descendent from the Tsukioka monarchs, so – get this – he could smell the metal. And then he scolded me for stealing it. But I was like thirteen at the time, and I thought he was kinda cute, so I listened to him. I only _really_ got Lucy last year when Tsumugi-san put in a good word for me with the queen. So, I got Lucy, and then I jumped ship and ran out of the capital.” Settsu laughs. “Maybe I’m a dragon, too, and just don’t know it.”

“You’d know it,” Juza sighs.

Settsu eyes him. “Okay,” he says. “How do _you_ know Tsumugi-san?”

Juza’s version of the story – growing up with his mother and learning all he knows about dragons from her, meeting Tsumugi and learning even more, meeting Tsumugi’s husbands – takes much longer. He’s finishing up his account of Tsumugi’s greenhouse and helping out in it when they come over the crest of a hill and spot the town Settsu mentioned through the trees.

They race each other into town.

It’s somehow less charming than Juza’s hometown despite being larger and having more shops and inns to offer. There are nice parts to it, though. Along the main drag there are as many as four bakeries that Juza spots and Settsu subsequently drags him away from. Settsu’s target is apparently a multi-story inn : Lavender Lost Inn.

It’s a nice kind of inn : one that Juza’s sure that Tsumugi would like. It seems to double as a bathhouse and a small eatery, and Settsu drags him to the baths as soon as they pay their entry fee. They leave their bags in charmed chests that seem to open and close at their touch and no one else’s. Juza’s struck by that level of memory magick on something as cheap as chests for a bathhouse.

The baths themselves are impressively decorated, too. Tiled floors are a luxury for this part of the kingdom, and the small designs of the lavender sprigs are a nice touch. Settsu doesn’t seem to find this impressive. He takes Juza by the wrist, telling him to ‘stop staring so much,’ and brings him into one of the stalls for washing off.

They rinse off together and spend a pleasant amount of time soaking in the baths, continuing their conversation about Tsumugi and their childhoods. It’s nice, Juza thinks, to be out together by themselves, getting by and paying for their things like they’re not kids. Juza supposes that Settsu really isn’t a kid anymore, seeing as he hasn’t mentioned his family once this entire time, but it’s still new for Juza. After, Settsu buys him a bowl of noodles and fried bun at the eatery. Juza savors the flavors of the food in silence, letting the sweetness of the bean paste and the flakiness of the fried dough send sparks through his mouth. Settsu watches him idly over his black coffee and breakfast crepe.

They buy a few things at the traveler’s shop near the edge of town. Settsu insists that they buy not one but two extra quilts : chooses admittedly pretty quilts from heavy, insulated fabrics and feathers and buys it himself, saying it’s payback for all the dinners Juza’s mom’s cooked for him over the last few months. There’s a magick shop in the town, too, and it’s Juza’s idea to look through the shop for anything useful. There, Settsu buys a small jar of heat salt.

The Pines are far north – Settsu tries to argue it’s _too_ far to get to in one day, but Juza easily ignores his whining – and their trek is swift-paced despite the difficult terrain of the forest and the few rivers they have to cross.

Halfway through the Knoeld Forest, they encounter a sole forest troll out collecting mushrooms. Of course, it happens to take offense at their presence, and Juza watches from the base of a tree while Settsu takes a club to the back. Juza promptly leaves, giving Settsu no other choice but to scramble after him, hissing about his back, screaming curses over his shoulder at the troll.

“Starting to think all forest creatures hate me,” Settsu complains. “Fucking pixies and now trolls.”

“Pixies hated ya ‘cause you whacked their bushes.”

“Yeah, you’ve mentioned it. Maybe they shouldn’t get offended so easily.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have whacked their bushes.”

They reach the southern edge of the pines at nightfall. It’s Settsu’s idea to set up camp by the waterside, just a little high on the shore as to avoid any flooding. It’s likely a wise move. The Pines are known enough for stealing people in the night if one is not careful. Juza mentions one of his mom’s stories, and they end up settled around the campfire swapping folktales they’ve heard before.

“Mom once told me ‘bout the conch voices.”

“The...” Settsu chokes on his tea and pauses to catch his breath. “The _what_ now?”

“Conch voices. They’re somethin’ magick users know about.”

“Okay. Spill.”

“Some magick users are ‘specially good with sea stuff. I dunno ; Mom’s never brought anythin’ from the sea into our shop. Said that the ones out by the sea and the rich ones deal with conch voices a lot. ‘Pparently if ya lift a conch shell up to your ear and close your eyes, ya can hear a voice talkin’ to ya.”

“Bullshit,” Settsu scoffs, but he leans in curious nonetheless. “What do they say?”

“Depends. Mom said an old theory ‘bout them was that they were sirens’ voices tryin’ to lure people back to the ocean.”

“Wouldn’t put it past them.”

“Have ya seen a siren before?”

“Yeah,” Settsu shrugs. “I mean, it’s kinda popular for the guys at the academy. Some of the girls, too, but not as many. We sneak out into the forest and peek on the sirens in their pools.”

“‘s rude.”

“Yeah.” Settsu doesn’t sound at all sorry about it. “It’s okay, though. They got back at us a few years by doing their magick and eating a few of the guys who were weak to their mirage trick.”

“You saw that?” It sounds horrific to Juza’s ears.

Settsu shakes his head. “Nah, nah. They just dragged them underwater. But everyone knows they eat them later, right?”

“No?” Settsu frowns at Juza. “They rip the bodies apart and use it as fertilizer for whatever grows near them. Helps protect them.”

“Wait, really?”

“Yeah. Like flesh-eatin’ clams.”

Settsu hums in consideration. They continue to eat in quietude.

A sparkle up in the northeast sky distracts Juza from tending to the fire. He peeks up at the sky and squints. It _looked_ like a star droplet. He waits, but the sky is still and silent. The real stars – far away – twinkle down at him.

“What?” Settsu asks.

“Thought I saw… somethin.’”

“Somethin?’”

Juza waits. Then, there! He jabs a finger at the sky as another droplet falls. Settsu makes a small noise of awe to his side ; he’s seen it, too. Then, a third falls.

“We gotta go,” Juza declares.

He immediately sets to kicking dirt over the campfire, snatching their sticks of bird’s meat out of the way. Settsu sputters.

“Now?”

“ _Now_.”

Juza grabs the kettle and starts running.

“Oi!” Settsu hollers from behind, but Juza continues charging along the river bank east.

Two star showers in two months is a good sign, even if they’ve both fallen much further south than the north shores. It could mean that celestial activity has picked up again. Even better, Juza will be able to collect some recently blessed ingredients and carry them as gifts for his mom upon return.

Distantly, he hears Settsu running after him, dragging the rest of their belongings and cursing as things continue to haphazardly spill out of the pockets and sachets. The star shower’s close, though, and Juza doesn’t want to miss it.

He turns into the forest and charges past trees, ferns, and bushes. A few owls spook from the lower tree branches as he runs underneath. He hears a small gnome roll out of his path, which _would_ interest him – Juza’s never seen a forest gnome and not many other people have – but he’s so close.

Juza stops at the tree line. Just like the star shower on the night he met Settsu, it seems that luck has landed the starfall in a small clearing : a dip down from the rest of the forest ground. There’s a fair amount of alchemist’s heather in the grove : some jewelberries and some king’s sage.

The sound of branches breaking behind him tells him that Settsu’s catching up.

“Wait!” he yells back, and Settsu slows to a halt. “Stay back a bit. If one hits you, you’ll die.”

“Thought stars were harmless,” Settsu calls back, but he listens to Juza’s advice.

“Yeah, ‘less they’re hurtling from the sky at these kinds of speeds.”

“What about you?”

As if to demonstrate to Settsu, a star fragment slams into Juza’s cheek. His scales come out just in time, though Juza still feels the burn and the pressure – it will bruise later, surely – and the star bounces off him onto the grass. A nearby pinecone sucks its light up, leaving the grass empty.

“Gotcha,” Settsu remarks.

It’s a small star shower, though, and it isn’t even five minutes before Juza tells Settsu he can come out. They collect some of the blessed ingredients from the clearing. Settsu tends to the heather bushes, and Juza scours for the best of the blessed jewelberries.

Then, Settsu draws his sword. Juza smells it the next second after : an alchemist’s staff with crested ruby.

“Who’s there?” Settsu demands.

Juza tucks his necklace into his shirt.

“Me, you brat,” a stuffy, older voice snaps from the bushes to the west of the clearing.

An alchemist – not too old but not young anymore, either – steps out into the clearing. His staff, which is otherwise a humble hickory wood, shines vaguely under the starlight with crested ruby. He’s a little stuffy for an alchemist, Juza thinks vaguely. He looks more like one of those horrid magick users his mom introduced him to a few years ago while they were traveling through.

“Sakyo-san?” Banri asks incredulously, lowering his sword.

Juza glances between the two of them. If they know each other, does that mean that the alchemist is from the royal academy?

“Ah, me, too,” another voice calls, and a much larger and stronger man steps out into the clearing. “It’s just us, though.”

“Omi,” Banri slides his sword back into its sheath. “What are you doing here?”

“His Majesty has requested that his magick users look through their telling methods to find star showers after the last one came down in the south. We alchemists have been asked to gather what we can of the star fragments.”

“And I’m just here for the ingredients,” Omi chuckles, hand on his neck bashfully. “Jewelberries already taste good, but imagine their flavor after they’ve been hit by a few star shards.”

“Besides the point,” the alchemist sniffs. “Settsu, what are you doing with a dragon looking for star fragments?”

Juza feels the three pairs of eyes land on him. He tenses up and waits for Settsu to speak for him. Juza doesn’t like having this much attention on him.

“We, uh,” Settsu’s doing a horrible job of answering. “Look, uh. I don’t really know. We’re delivering something, and this guy said we should collect a few blessed things for his mom.”

“Is that so?”

“They’re magick users.”

The alchemist raises an eyebrow. “A dragon that’s also a magick user?” He turns to Juza. “What’s your name?”

“Ain’t givin’ ya it.”

“Hah?”

“We don’t ask to be nosy!” Omi cuts in. Juza shifts his gaze over to him. “There just aren’t many dragons in the kingdom!”

Juza doesn’t respond. The two share a glance. Juza’s suspicion rises.

“Look,” Settsu cuts in. “You know ‘bout Tsumugi. The idea is none of that stuff ever touches him, okay?”

“Having an undocumented dragon can pose a threat to the kingdom,” the alchemist argues.

“Okay, ring kisser.” The alchemist visibly bristles with indignation. “Come on, old man. He’s not a bad dude. Everything’s perfectly fine here. You can come get your fragments, Omi can get his berries, and we’ll be on our way.”

“Fat chance. You two are sitting down and having a nice, long chat with us about where the hell you think you’re going, what you’re delivering, and why we shouldn’t report _you_ ,” he glares at Settsu, “for stealing a sword and making off with it.”

“You said Tsumugi gave you the sword,” Juza cuts in.

“Oh, he did,” Sakyo agrees, speaking over Settsu’s response. Settsu glares at him. “Though it was specifically given under the condition that Settsu continue to serve the royal family with it on his hip.”

“Screw that,” Settsu growls. “Royal family can suck my ass.”

“Alright!” Omi interrupts. “Sakyo-san, shall we finish gathering what we can here for? We can talk the boys once we’re done.”

Sakyo grumbles and gives Settsu the mean eye before turning to the grasses and scouring for leftover star shards. Settsu backs up towards Juza.

“What should we do?” Settsu hisses under his breath. “Old fart’s never gonna let us just run.”

“How do ya know him?”

“Royal academy. He’s the head royal alchemist. We don’t get along.”

“I saw.”

“Okay, lay off, what should we do?”

Juza doesn’t know. He desperately wishes his mother were here to make the calls right now. All of the joy at having a little more responsibility on his shoulders feels horrifically baring now : like he’s naked without someone to help him navigate these sorts of things.

He ends up agreeing to wait to talk with the two, no matter the dread weighing down in his stomach.

The talk doesn’t come once Sakyo and Omi finish gathering what they like from the remainders of the star shower. Instead, Omi offers to make them all a proper dinner : something that even Settsu and Sakyo seem eager for. Indeed, seeing the guy pull out all sorts of pans from his shrinking satchel and start a fire before getting out some artisan oils and meat slices in their paper packing, Juza’s more eager at the idea of a shared dinner.

Dinner ends up being a jewelberry-glazed bit of sirloin steak with well-seasoned potatoes that Omi mashes up in the pot. Juza melts at the sweet berry sauce over the meat.

“I suppose it would be polite to introduce ourselves,” Omi says once they’ve started to properly dig into their meal. “I’m one of the sous-chefs at the castle. It’s my turn to go gathering for the best ingredients this month, which is why I’m out with Sakyo-san. The name’s Fushimi Omi.”

“Furuichi Sakyo,” the alchemist grumbles. “Head alchemist at the royal academy and chief alchemist to receive the royal family’s patronage. I’m also currently in charge of the royal dragon.”

“Tsumugi-san,” Settsu grumbles around his fork.

“Yes, yes,” Sakyo ignores Settsu. “So, what is a dragon doing on a small travel off the beaten path?”

“Going to the north shores,” Juza says honestly. He can’t be sure if Sakyo doesn’t have a truth charm on him. He’s heard rumors that all castle personnel keep one on them at all times. “My mom asked me to deliver something.”

“And what is that?”

Juza hesitates. “More so to pick up star sand.”

“Surely a magick user would know that the north shores have all but dried up. It’s been almost a year since the last starfall.”

“Sand can be used for other things,” Juza mumbles. He bites into a piece of steak to avoid answering the next question in any kind of speedy manner.

Sakyo watches him with eyes too calculating. He turns to Omi, and the two of them seem to communicate without speaking.

“You’re right,” Sakyo finally says. “The sand of the north shores can be useful for ice-related magicks. Perhaps it’s high time that I’ve gone to collect some myself for the magick users at the academy. You won’t mind if we join your trip, of course.”

“Fuck off,” Settsu bites from the corner.

“Unless you have something to hide.”

Sakyo glares down his nose at Settsu. Juza’s caught between a rock and a very, very hard place. He has no choice, though. There’s only one answer for this.

“Alright,” he accepts.

Settsu shoots him a look like he’s out of his mind. Maybe he is.

That night, once they’ve gone to bed and Sakyo’s snoring is soft enough and slow enough that he might really be asleep, Juza drags Settsu out into the woods, muttering he has to piss. Settsu gets the hint and follows without a single complaint.

Decently far from the camp, they duck behind a tree and huddle together.

“What’re we gonna do now?” Settsu whispers so softly that Juza wouldn’t be able to hear him if he weren’t also reading Settsu’s lips. “Should we just continue like normal and you do your thing once we get there while I distract them?”

“Don’t think I’ll be able to hide it.”

Settsu pauses. In the quiet moment, his eyes drift lower. He stares at the necklace.

“What is it?”

Juza tenses. He’s starting to hate that question. It’s starting to make him unreasonably terrified and a little angry, too. It should be enough that he’s told his mom. Settsu doesn’t need to know, too. No one else needs to know.

“Not telling,” Juza snaps.

“Hey,” Settsu says. “Look at me.”

Juza blinks. He realizes his vision has fogged a little. His eyes meet Settsu’s once more. Suddenly, he realizes how close they are. Softly – which isn’t something he thought could describe Settsu – Settsu reaches up and lays two hands on Juza’s chest. This feels different from what they usually do. This isn’t bickering and teasing and flickering between irritation and friendliness.

“You’ve been out of it,” Settsu tells him carefully. “You’re hiding that necklace of yours more and more, and you’re getting snappier when I talk about it. Do dragon hoards get worse the longer they exist?”

“No.”

“Then, what is it?”

“It’s… hard to explain.”

“Try me.”

“Promise you won’t get scared.”

“You’re not that fucking scary, dude. You could stand to stop glaring at everyone ya see, but I mean-”

“ _Promise._ ”

Settsu cuts off. The hands on Juza’s chest wrap around his shoulders, and Settsu steps in close. Juza raises his arms, and they stand in a loose hug.

“Okay, I promise. Dumbass.”

Juza sighs. He melts a little in Settsu’s hold. Impossibly, Settsu smells like one of his mother’s scented balms : the kinds that she sells as perfume substitutes. It smells nice. He holds Settsu tighter.

“It’s a star,” he whispers. Settsu doesn’t respond, so Juza presses on. “It fell in my hands the night I met you during the star shower. I didn’t mean to imprint on it. I just… I just looked at it in my hands, and it felt like I could never stare at it long enough to feel satisfied. And then I realized what I did.”

Settsu is still silent.

“I… I didn’t mean to,” Juza repeats.

Settsu hushes him. “Hoards aren’t embarrassing. Tsumugi-san’s never been embarrassed about being a dragon. You shouldn’t either.”

“But-”

“I gotta say, though,” Settsu pulls away a little and flicks his gaze between Juza’s face and the necklace hanging around his neck, “didn’t expect your ugly mug to imprint on somethin’ as pretty as a star.”

The teasing tone is so familiar that Juza finds himself smiling back before he realizes it.

“Alright,” Settsu says. He lets go of Juza. “We should head back before Shithead Sakyo comes after us.”

Settsu starts to step away : starts to head back to their camp. But with the moonlight streaming in through the trees, a beam of light hits the jewel in Settsu's ear just _so_ , and Juza finds himself reaching out : holding Settsu against the bark of the tree trunk. Settsu’s oddly still as Juza brushes some of the hair out of the way and holds his ear to let the diamond glitter. It’s a nocturnal diamond. So, the other diamond earring Settsu gave them wasn’t his only one. Juza wants to scoff, but he likes the way the light refracts off the geometrical cut.

"Hyodo," Settsu whispers.

Juza realizes he has the other pinned. He starts to back off, but a remarkably strong grip finds its hold on his shirt and tugs him close. He catches himself a little, holds himself a few inches from Settsu.

"Tell me now if I shouldn't."

"Shouldn't what?"

"I'm gonna kiss you."

Juza hesitates. "I've never-"

"I know," Settsu cuts him off. "I know. Can I?"

It takes a small moment for Juza to fully process the request, but he nods shakily.

"Okay," Settsu says. The fist bunched up in Juza's shirt loosens. The hand moves up to Juza's jaw and cups it gently. Settsu's other hand comes up to hold one of Juza's biceps lightly. "Follow my lead."


	4. stars and dragons and the lakeside estate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The company takes a detour to the Tsukioka Estate, situated in the valley by Lake Ryuuhyou along the Tachibana border. There, Banri and Juza argue over what they want from each other, as well as confide in Tsumugi their frustrations. Tsumugi gives some advice, and the four set off one last time. A messenger comes with a hard message to hear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ive been procrastinating so long on this, but i finally got the last burst of inspiration i needed to finish! i know the chapter count has changed wildly, but i'm finally happy with a five act story and i have the rest of this plotted out to the end. banri and juza's dynamic in this has been so difficult to write because of how unique it is to this au, but i'm getting more and more comfortable with it. i hope you enjoy!!!

Kissing, Juza learns, is both underwhelming and intense : inexplicably at the same time, even. Rather, he’s not sure he’d want to kiss anyone if they weren’t Settsu because Settsu has an infuriating talent at making even the mundane refreshing. Juza knew this already, in theory – in practice – through the countless hours he’s spent in the shop with Settsu perusing their inventory and driving him up the wall with chatter. Something about _this_ , in particular, though, teaches Juza more than anything else about this talent of Settsu’s.

So much of this is just lips moving on lips, sucking a little and biting when they can, while Juza nervously tries to follow Settsu’s lead. It should be humiliating : the way Settsu so clearly knows what he’s doing and Juza can only cautiously reciprocate in the small spaces between Settsu’s movements. Yet, the way that Settsu holds Juza’s jaw and tugs on Juza’s hair and rests his right hand on Juza’s chest is breathtakingly compelling, so Juza doesn’t mind the rest. From the way Settsu sighs quietly here and there, he must like it, too.

They could stay there the better half of the evening like that, if they were allowed. Juza wants the practice to get better at this. He’s sure that Settsu would be open to that suggestion of staying right here, too. However, there are more pressing matters to attend to. They’ll need to return to camp soon if they want to avoid suspicion.

So, it’s when Settsu hums against his lips – pecking them one last time – and starts dipping his kisses across Juza’s jawline, heading dangerously for Juza’s neck and burning Juza’s skin with heat as he goes, that Juza pulls back a little. Settsu lifts his head. His eyes are foggy.

“What’s up?”

“Gotta get back to camp,” Juza reminds him. This doesn’t mean that he’s letting go of Settsu’s hand anytime soon. Their held hands rest on Juza's chest.

“Yeah? You not into this?”

“Into it,” Juza replies, flushing at the honest admission and the smile that flickers like soft candlelight onto Settsu’s face when he says it. “We gotta get back, though.”

“Fine,” Settsu hums. He tugs Juza a little closer and kisses at Juza’s neck. “Gimme a minute here first?”

“Why?”

“You’ll see.”

The sucking almost becomes painful after a small while. Juza hisses and tightens his grip on Settsu’s hand and cloak but stands still patiently. Teeth bite down, and then Settsu pulls away, eyeing the spot under Juza’s jawline where he bit.

“Ow,” Juza mutters and raises a hand to rub the spot.

“If ya don’t like it, we don’t gotta do it again. I just thought it’d be a good cover story if they get too nosy.”

Juza can’t say he’s thrilled with Settsu’s solution to that problem, but it’s hard to deny the effectiveness of it. He settles for rolling his eyes and setting off back towards their camp. Settsu falls in step with him not even a beat after.

They walk step-in-step back, feet crunching onto the frost already laid onto the twigs and moss of the damp ground. It’s a chilly night. The Pines are quiet and still at this hour. Fog creeps over the hills and clings to the trees thickly. By midnight, the fog will cover even their camp with its damp chill. In the morning, their blankets will be covered in frost.

Many different creatures and people call the Pines ‘home.’ Forest trolls are some of the more well-known of these creatures, but there are still the rock trolls, the wisps, faefolk, the ever-rare moss pixies, and the even rarer gnomes. Most of the gnomes live in Knoeld Forest rather than the Pines, but Juza’s heard stories of both. Their group will be lucky if they leave the Pines without a skirmish with one of these groups or any of the magick users who have retreated to their solitude here amongst the trees.

“The fuck?”

Settsu’s voice snaps Juza’s attention snaps away from the dim spaces between distant trees and to his side. Settsu goes off running in front of him, and Juza squints before he realizes why.

Sakyo and Omi stand in their camp holding the star textbook.

Juza takes off after Settsu. Sakyo and Omi hear them coming well before they arrive, but Settsu doesn’t seem to care about the lack of surprise as he barrels into the nook of their camp.

“The hell are you doing with our shit?”

“Watch your mouth with me.”

Juza storms past Settsu and would snatch the book right out of Sakyo’s hands if he didn’t believe the alchemist would immediately retaliate with some kind of attack. So, instead, Juza outstretches his hand : pointedly.

“Give that back.”

Sakyo raises an unimpressed brow. “How about you tell me what a dragon magick user is doing with a book about stars? With a dog-eared page to start the chapter on interactions of celestial bodies and earthly dragons.”

Juza clamps his jaw shut. He reaches out further for the book.

“That’s none of your fucking business,” Settsu retorts. “Don’t you have more pride than to snoop through someone’s things in the middle of the night?”

“I don’t think you’re in a place to question your superiors, brat.”

“ _Fuck_ you, and give it _back_.”

Omi clears his throat, and Sakyo bites back his reply.

“Alright,” Omi says. “Juza, I think we’ve pieced together what you’re hiding. Would you care to explain to us what it is, or should we say it?”

“Don’t listen to his crap,” Settsu immediately cuts in. “He’s just trying to get you to confess to bullshit.”

“Banri,” Omi chides. His voice is stern with disapproval. “This is Juza’s choice to say it himself or have it be said for him.”

Eyes turn to Juza.

Juza looks between the three of them. There’s something sad yet kind in Omi’s voice that makes Juza want to trust him, instinctively : some seed of good conscience and history of seeing the wrong choice taken too many times. At the same time, he has to trust Settsu on this. Not just because Settsu knows these people but because Juza needs to show him that he _is_ listening and _is_ trusting Settsu. He’s not going to shut Settsu out, if that’s what he’s afraid of.

“‘m tryin’ to deliver somethin,’” Juza says, each word coming out harder than the last. “Can’t say what it is, but ‘s important.” Sakyo and Omi share a glance. “Somethin’ the north shores’ll benefit from. It’ll make my life safer, too, once ‘s gone.”

Sakyo sighs tiredly. At the same time, Omi beams at Juza. Settsu shifts behind him.

“Fine,” Sakyo says tiredly. “Fine.” He offers the book, and Juza snatches it from him. “I trust you understand the stakes of what you’re doing. That book isn’t the only book that’s been written on the subject.”

“There are others?” Juza demands. His mother hadn’t mentioned this.

“There are. Hidden, of course, from the general public’s knowledge. The royal family can’t risk such devastating things.”

“For the kingdom’s sake or for their own damn sakes?” Settsu spits.

“Now, now,” Omi interrupts. “Both parties would benefit from keeping this a secret.”

“Yeah? And which one came first in the thought process?”

“Enough!” Sakyo hollers at Settsu. Juza’s surprised when Settsu actually flinches back. Sakyo turns to Juza, irritation creasing his forehead. “We’ll help you to the north shores. And when we get there, you’ll complete your delivery. Understood?” Juza nods. “If you can’t, Fushimi and I will take it from your neck.”

Those end up being the wrong words for him to say. No sooner do they leave Sakyo’s mouth than Juza swears he sees nothing but white and feels nothing but every muscle in his body tense, then lunge for the man’s throat. He’ll take this alchemist’s neck first.

The scent of steel – familiar to Juza’s nose – and of his mother’s scented balms distract him. Juza blinks, and, suddenly, there’s a sword under his hands, holding him up and off of Sakyo, who lays mere inches from Juza’s scale-covered hands. Juza stares down at the sword.

“Hyodo.”

That’s Settsu’s voice, and Juza looks to his side. Settsu stands there : arms straining to hold the sword in place. Juza realizes the sword in his hands, shaking with the strain of holding him up, is Lucy.

“Hyodo, I need you to ease up for me.”

It takes a second for the request to register, but Juza eases off. Lethargically, he stumbles back. Then, Settsu’s reaching out for him, or what Juza initially thinks is him and then soon realizes is the necklace. He lunges again, this time for Settsu’s throat, but Lucy gets pulled to his neck swifter than a selkie can dive, and Juza’s thrown down onto the ground.

He knows he can overpower this. He can rip this sword right out of this guy’s hands. He’s done it before. But something in him gets him to hold back just the slightest, and then Settsu’s hands are on the necklace, and, in the smallest moment, those hands tuck the necklace into his shirt. Juza processes this in a fuzzy mess : the hand now on his chest pressing the necklace close to his skin.

“I’m gonna put the sword away,” Settsu warns him. “Can you keep yourself under control?”

Juza nods once.

Lucy goes back in her sheath. Knees find the ground beside Juza, and Settsu leans in to check him. Juza can only stare at the fear he finds on Sakyo’s face. The alchemist lies still in shock on the cold ground where he had flinched down towards to get away from Juza just seconds prior.

“Banri,” Omi says quietly, “can I do anything?”

“Get me water.”

Omi goes to their bags and searches for the canteen amongst their belongings.

“So, it’s started,” Sakyo finally speaks : voice still raspy. “Not fully. Not yet.” His eyes are fixated on Juza’s chest. “How long have you had it?”

Juza swallows ; his throat is dry. “A few months.”

“This is bad, you realize.”

“I do.”

Omi’s back with their canteen, and Settsu unscrews the lid. He holds it out to Juza. Juza accepts the canteen, mostly because he can’t think of what else to do. As he drinks, he listens to Omi and Sakyo talk to themselves. Almost, it feels like a type of judgment day has just been placed on Juza’s calendar.

“Hey,” Settsu rests a warm and heavy hand on his shoulder. “You’re good? You’re with me?”

Juza hands the canteen back to him. “Yeah,” he says, but he’s not sure if it’s the truth. “Didn’t realize it had gotten this bad. I swear it… wasn’t this bad.”

“Come on. Two strangers in service to the royal family just threatened to take your hoard. That’s a pretty fuckin’ good reason to lose it, if ya ask me.” Settsu leans in closer, and the warmth is reassuring in the cold night. “You’re gonna give me a heart attack if you make me pull Lucy out quick like that again.”

“Sorry.”

Settsu looks like he wants to ask something, but Sakyo clears his throat, and the two of them turn back to the two royal employees.

“Hyodo, was it?” Sakyo asks. “Are you familiar with the name Tsukioka Tsumugi?”

“Tsumugi mentored me as a kid.”

Sakyo nods. “Excellent. Then, I think it would be wise for you to consult with him on your condition. He has much more experience with relinquishing items from his hoard. Perhaps he will have advice for you.”

“North shores are far,” Juza argues. “Might not make it in time if we do.”

“Tsukioka is a much better route. If you can relinquish your star, we will be able to carry it for you. It will lessen the toll it takes on your body.”

“It might also help to see some friendly faces,” Omi adds. Sympathy pours from him. “I know our presence must be giving you a lot of stress.”

“You’ll acknowledge it, but you won’t fuck off,” Settsu snidely retorts. “I know how it is with you fuckers.”

“Banri, we’re working together.”

Settsu sneers back. Juza’s hand meeting his on Juza’s shoulder gets him to hesitate, though : clamp his mouth shut.

“Fine. Tsumugi’s it is,” Juza agrees.

And, so, they turn away from the north and towards the far east : lakebed area in the valleys below the Tachibana border and the towering mountain range of ice there. It’s about a two weeks’ journey from their point at the south of the Pines to the Ryuuhyou Lake near where Tsumugi’s estate lies. Most of the journey utilizes the forest paths along the roads, and encounters with the deeper threats of the forests are of no concern.

Settsu’s in a foul mood for the entire length of their travel. He barely says a word to Juza beyond his usual greetings – now sour in tone – and the few times they fish alone while Sakyo and Omi scour for edible plants amongst the briars and grasses. Juza tries to ask, once, why Settsu dislikes the two newcomers to their company so much, but the response is vague at best. Sakyo is apparently the uptight head alchemist that Settsu had butted heads with constantly throughout his training, and Omi is too much of a pushover to truly be a ‘good guy,’ in Settsu’s words.

There’s another reason underneath the surface, Juza can sense, but he doesn’t press for it. Settsu mentions something about the prince – Tenma – and the prince’s servantry and the influence of the King and the Queen. Settsu’s opinion of the royalty rests in hatred and anger. Of the prince, Settsu seems more sympathetic. Apparently, Sakyo and Omi are too forgiving towards the royalty’s styles of leadership and parenting.

Juza doesn’t learn much more than that.

As such, Juza spends much of his time along their trek hoping that their arrival on Tsumugi’s doorstep will ease some of the tensions between them and, safely, bring to light so many of the conversations their group has only half had. Settsu still doesn’t know of star corruption – Omi might not either – and none of them can fully grasp hoarding and letting go in the way that Tsumugi does.

Upon their arrival, however, the estate rests eerily silent in the valley.

The farm fields are stagnant. Some of the early fall crops are yet unharvested : left to dry up in the soil. The towing builds sit unused in the dirt paths. The cattle are somewhere far out in their pastures beyond what they can see but specks of black and brown along the horizon of rolling highlands. The slope down into the wetlands seems to have more birds than usual and taller grasses.

Simply put, the Tsukioka Estate is barren.

At this, the four of them find solace enough in their company to share concerned, wary looks. They walk together up the main lane to the house. Past the fences, even some of the plants along the windowsills seem to be wilting. Tsumugi has never let a single one of his plants rot. They _can’t_. They’re his hoard.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Sakyo murmurs as they pass an empty wheelbarrow abandoned alongside the fence with weeds starting to grow underneath it.

“You don’t suppose they moved?”

Sakyo shakes his head at Omi’s inquiry. “One of my apprentices would have come to inform us if that were the case.”

“I dunno,” Settsu chimes in. “Maybe Azami couldn’t find us because he didn’t know we’d be heading this way.”

“One of the senior magick users would have predicted our location and informed him.”

Settsu bites his lip and looks up along the house where ivy creeps. They remain quiet.

Together, they come to a stop a few paces before the arching, pale, baby blue front door. It’s the color of bird eggshells, but the paint is peeling. Juza takes in a deep breath and walks up to the wood. He grasps the silver knocker and knocks four times before stepping back to Settsu’s side. They wait in silence.

It’s a long stretch of time that they wait : no one saying anything for fear of breaking the spell of patience still lingering over them. Then, faint footsteps echo behind the door and, after many metal clanks as if removing several padlocks, the door cracks open a fraction. Dust blooms into clouds from the doorstep.

“Who is it?”

Juza recognizes Tasuku’s voice immediately and steps forward. “Hyodo Juza.”

The door opens a fraction wider. Tasuku looks through the gap, eyeing the four of them with a severe expression, almost seeming to judge them individually for their worth.

“And what are you doing with three employees of the royal family?”

“Not with those fuckers anymore,” Settsu pipes up. “Got a new thing called freedom I’m working on. I’m with Hyodo now.”

“And _we_ are still in the royal family’s patronage,” Sakyo adds, gesturing between him and Omi. “We come on behalf of this young dragon’s protection. We seek counsel with Tsukioka.”

Tasuku’s expression does not waver. “Tsumugi isn’t seeing anyone right now, thank you. Leave.”

There’s general voiced confusion, and then Juza steps closer to the door. Tasuku moves back behind the door, and it strikes Juza how unsettling it is to see a man larger and much older than himself move away from him. Perhaps, Juza is a dragon, but Tasuku is still a member of Tsukioka’s hoard. Juza could never hurt him no matter how hard he tried.

“‘s important,” Juza insists. “I… I got a hoard.”

At this, Tasuku does waver. His eyes flit up and down Juza’s form.

“Show it.”

On reflex, Juza steps back, hand flying to his chest. “No,” is out of his mouth before he can think.

This, however, seems to be the reaction that Tasuku had been looking for. He undoes some more of the locks of the large door and gestures for Juza to come inside. When Settsu, Sakyo, and Omi step forwards to follow, Tasuku throws the door nearly shut once more.

“Just Juza.”

“What the hell?”

Sakyo hushes Settsu with a whack of his staff. “Takato. What is going on?”

“None of the business of those under royal patronage. Including those formerly associated.”

“Settsu’s alright,” Juza tries. Tasuku’s eyes are back on him : cold and unforgiving. “He’s been with me for a while now.”

“I was final on my decision.”

Footsteps click on polished wooden floors from further in the home. Around a corner, Homare comes striding up on swift, gliding feet.

“Tasuku, my dear,” Homare calls. “Who has come along with our young Juza-kun?”

“Three of the royal family’s service : one recently retired.”

Homare hums and, upon reaching them, offers Juza a warm pat on the shoulder with a smile. The strong scent of tea accompanies his presence. He pushes Tasuku aside from the door and peers out.

“Ah, dear alchemist!” he calls. “So sorry to inform you that our Tsumugi is recovering from a cold. We wouldn’t want too many people from outside coming in and possibly worsening his condition, I’m sure you understand. As such, please excuse us for only accepting young Juza-kun for the time being.”

“And Settsu,” Juza immediately adds. Homare raises a finely designed eyebrow. “Please.”

“Settsu…” Homare pushes the door open and gestures for Settsu to come in. “Banri-kun, is it? A delight to meet you.”

Hesitantly, Settsu does approach. Homare grasps his shoulders and drags him in. Tasuku stands by the door as Homare scrutinizes Settsu. His hands rifle through his clothing. Settsu puts up a struggle to keep Homare’s hands off, but his whole belt and cloak are thoroughly searched.

“What the _fuck_ are you-” Settsu gasps when hands grab his sword. “Get your hands off!”

“My apologies,” Homare retracts his hands from Settsu’s waist and moves them to his hair, combing through the dirty strands with a thoroughly unimpressed grimace. Juza hides a small snicker at the sheer offense stamped across Settsu’s face. “Just a single sword for a traveler? Student of the royal academy, wasn’t it?”

“Formerly. Fuck them.”

“Ah, vulgarity!” Homare turns to Tasuku with a delighted grin. “Such is the vibrance of untrimmed youth! Come in, my dear. A friend of Juza-kun’s will always be a friend of ours.” He all but pushes Settsu down the hallway. “And for our two dear friends from the capital,” he calls through the doorway, “I invite you to take a gander about the scenery before you and appreciate your time here. Construct a poem, if you would, and, quite patiently, simply wait!”

Homare closes the door.

He turns to Juza and Settsu : all smiles. Tasuku’s popped an eye vessel in the last minute alone. He begins locking the door.

“Right this way, my dears. Tea?”

“Bitterest ya got,” Settsu accepts.

Homare glances to Juza. “And the warmed… chocolate… milk?”

“Hot cocoa.”

“Ah, yes. That for you?”

Juza nods. Homare clasps his hands together. “Excellent! Right this way, right this way.”

They’re led through the house to the kitchen, and, while Juza has been in this house for many, many years, Settsu gazes about the furnishings of a house of six lovers in awe. Juza can understand the feeling. There certainly is a certain _discrepancy_ between the different furnishings. Tsumugi’s plants cover shelves and cling to the walls of hallways, though they look worse for wear. Tasuku’s swords are displayed over the mantle, partially hidden by the large ceramic vases of roses that are Homare’s personal flair.

A few half-drank teacups are left about the tables – courtesy undoubtedly of ever-distracted Mikage – and Guy’s and Azuma’s decorations are few and far between : a prayer mat rolled up there, a bit of incense over there.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse our rudeness,” Homare chatters on as he sets about the kitchen and his preparations of offerings for his guests. “See, the reality of our unfortunately grim situation is that dear Tsumugi has, well.” He sighs. “Tsumugi has been, we believe, poisoned.”

“Poisoned?” Juza and Settsu exclaim in the same second that follows.

“How?” Juza presses on.

Tasuku joins them in the kitchen with Azuma shadowing his footsteps silently. Azuma waves a hello, but otherwise simply takes some medicine from a cabinet and vanishes once more from the room.

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Homare belabors. “Oh, how we’d love to know to heal him properly, but all we can do for now is close our doors and soothe his pain. Hence our unwillingness to let your traveling companions inside.” Homare holds up a tub of whipped cream from the ice box. “Cream, Juza-kun?”

“Yes, please.”

Homare slathers a bit of the sweet, whipped frosting onto the top of his mug of hot chocolate.

“So, what’s with the nonchalance?” Settsu questions. “Your lover’s poisoned, right? What if he dies? Aren’t you worried?”

“Of course we are worried, Banri-kun! But our Tsumugi is a dragon, and dragons are strong. They are not easily killed, and we do not yet fear for his life. It is the pain that he is in and the state of his being that pains us to see. You must understand that his hoard is wilting. His power is quite weakened, and there are many threats now posed to us that we have forgotten over the decades. Mortality is just one of those.”

Settsu accepts his cup of black tea with a small mutter of thanks and frowns into the cup. “But. Are there things that can kill a dragon?” He glances to Juza on his side. “I didn’t know you could… be made mortal.”

“Not mortal for Tsumugi,” Homare corrects. “Mortal for us. But even a dragon may die if the poisoning is bad enough.”

“There are things that can poison a dragon?” Settsu asks. He turns to Juza, expecting an answer. “Like what?”

Juza just wants to drink his hot chocolate. But he has to face this ; it’s long overdue. He shrugs. “Stars can.”

The temperature between Juza and the seat where Settsu sits plummets. Settsu stares at him.

“Excuse me?”

“‘s not well studied. Mom gave me a book o’ hers before I left. ‘s in one o’ the chapters. Stars can corrupt dragons : drive ‘em insane. Kill others before they kill themselves. That sorta thing.”

“And when were you planning on telling me this?”

Juza buries his nose in his whipped cream. “Didn’t have a good time yet.”

Tasuku and Homare share a private look.

“A good time?” Settsu repeats. Juza can hear the fury rising in his voice. “ _A good time?_ I’ve spent _months_ with your ass helping you carry that thing, telling you it was fine because you had a fucking problem with the idea of doing what you naturally do – hoard – and you _didn’t want to tell me_ that your hoard could _kill_ you because it wasn’t a _good time_?”

“Settsu, I wasn’t-”

“ _Fuck_ you.”

Juza sighs tiredly and sips his hot chocolate. Settsu rakes his fingernails along the marble countertop.

“Give it to me.”

“Huh?”

“I said _give it to me_. I’m not having you carry that thing for another _second_ if it’s gonna kill you.”

Somewhere, Juza can feel it starting to click : rage, bloodlust, possessiveness. Maybe feeling it start is progress to being able to curb it. He’s still standing up from his chair, though : hot chocolate abandoned on the counter. He would do a repeat of two weeks ago if not for the small slippers shuffling on the floor that distract him. He looks up to see Tsumugi standing in the entrance to the hallway : satin pajamas and fur slippers, holding onto Guy’s arm to steady himself.

“I thought I smelled a few familiar things,” Tsumugi smiles at them, but the smile is tired and worn too thin.

Tsumugi’s eyes – kind – find Settsu first.

“Imagine my surprise waking up from my nap to smell the metal of my bloodline’s sword just downstairs and with a dragon to boot!” Tsumugi’s eyes find Juza’s and crinkle with crow’s feet as they soften. “A dragon who has won himself a hoard, it seems.”

“Tsumugi,” Juza breathes. He had forgotten what ‘home’ could feel like. It's warm.

Tsumugi and Guy cross the room over to him and Settsu. Tsumugi rests his hands sweetly on Juza’s arm before moving in to hug him warmly but weakly.

“Tsumugi-san,” Settsu sinks back into his seat. “You look…”

Settsu trails off, unwilling to give voice to the obvious sickness in Tsumugi’s hands and face. His veins bulge uncomfortably from his hands and disappear behind his pajama sleeves, but, judging by the swelling around his neck and even in his face, they must bulge and throb all over his body. Juza can only imagine the pain he must be in.

“Unwell, I’m sure,” Tsumugi laughs softly.

“Are you sure you should be up?” Tasuku asks Tsumugi, eyeing the way he leans onto Juza for balance. “Homare was going to take you up your tea soon.” Homare nods in agreement.

Tsumugi sniffs. “I can feel my plants withering. The entire estate must have died by now, hasn’t it?” Settsu nods small-like. Tsumugi sighs. This news clearly pains him. “What sort of dragon would I be if I did not tend to them personally when my strength of imprint fails them? Banri-kun, would you help me with some of the work? I’m afraid I can’t repot my darlings in this state.”

“Uh. Sure.”

Settsu shares a cautious glance with Juza, eyes drifting low to the collar before snapping back to Tsumugi. Their conversation isn’t over, Juza knows.

Settsu gets out of his chair and downs his cup of tea in a single gulp. He offers his arm to Tsumugi and walks towards the sun room after Tsumugi’s lead. The terracotta flooring of the sun room will undoubtedly put unpleasant pressure on Tsumugi’s joints, and Settsu lets Tsumugi lean much of his weight on him.

“Juza,” Guy interrupts. Juza turns to the man. “Shall I take you to Tsumugi’s room? Perhaps a magick user might notice something that we have missed.”

A final glance into the sun room – Tsumugi now seated in a rocking chair and gently instructing Settsu how to trim some of his potted plants through a demonstration – has Juza hesitate before nodding. He follows Guy to the house’s main staircase.

It’s not often that Banri spends the majority of his afternoon on his knees : at least, for the purpose of gardening. He’s not sure where Hyodo has wandered off to. He’s probably been whisked away by one or more of Tsumugi’s husbands to an opposite side of the mansion just to keep the two of them apart. Banri has his own suspicions about the timing of Tsumugi’s interruption earlier, too. They need to finish that conversation.

He continues to gently pull the plants from their pots, untangling the roots from the mulch they had been potted in, and settling them down in a newly washed pot. He throws in handfuls of a mossier mixture that Tsumugi had instructed him to use. Behind him, closer to the great windows of the sunroom that stretch floor to ceiling, Tsumugi waters his trellises with a lightweight hose.

“Have you been taking care of yourself?” Tsumugi asks.

His voice is small in the bright and hot room. Banri glances over his shoulder to the kitchen and sitting area, but the only one in the room – that he can see, at least – is Homare curled up on the loveseat with an entire pot of tea and a stack of books. Homare flips a page idly. Banri turns back to repotting the ferns.

“Yeah, I guess. I’m alive, aren’t I?”

“I wasn’t sure how you’d fare after leaving the capital. You’ve always been very comfortable around crowds and busyness. You’re not bored out here?”

“Nah.”

Banri hasn’t known boredom since the night he first met Hyodo. Everything since then has been energetic like a bit of lightning caught in a magick jewel or the tension around a wasps’ nest. Even when it’s slow and the energy is lower like a dizzy, sun-sleepy bee buzzing between flowers during a summer’s noontime, it’s still warm. It’s addicting.

Tsumugi’s eyes aren’t on him, but Banri knows that Tsumugi’s judging his reaction from his periphery.

“That’s good,” Tsumugi praises. “How did the two of you meet?”

Banri hides the wince by wiping a few drops of water off his cheek. Tsumugi won’t like his answer. “Fightin.’”

Tsumugi, predictably, frowns.

“Ah, it wasn’t anythin’ too bad,” Banri hurries on. “He beat my ass real good. And. Well. He beat me. Never had that happen before.”

“Juza-kun did?” Banri nods, and Tsumugi turns back to the trellises along the windows. “He’s a strong man with a strong genetic trait to aid him. How do you feel about it?”

“I like it. Would like it more if he stopped shoving me away after every time we get a little closer.”

“What do you mean?”

Banri sighs. In his spiral of negative thoughts, he accidentally breaks a root off. He freezes, and sees Tsumugi flinch in the corner of his eyes. Tsumugi sets down the hose and takes a seat for a moment. He breathes in slowly, and Banri stays still and bites his lip as Tsumugi calms from the rage. The sheer restraint is impressive, though the wait of the ‘cool-down’ is as stressful as a close battle.

“What do you mean?” Tsumugi finally repeats once the moment’s gone.

“I mean.” Banri glances back into the kitchen once more. He’d rather get killed in a dragon’s rage than risk Hyodo overhearing this. Fuck, even Tasuku overhearing this would be humiliating beyond what Banri thinks he could handle. “It’s obvious, innit?”

“Juza-kun can be very sweet,” Tsumugi remarks neutrally : too neutrally. It’s a set-up, Banri knows.

“I’m not gonna lie and say I don’t like the guy or whatever,” Banri huffs. “But. I don’t know. Stupid, I guess.”

“Feelings are never stupid,” Tsumugi reassures. “They might be hard to overcome or unwieldy at their time, but they’re never stupid.”

Banri sighs. That doesn’t really help. He works on the roots of the next pot.

“It’s one-sided, I think.”

“What is?”

Banri grits his teeth. “I like him, okay? And it sucks that he doesn’t want me just as bad. And it’s not just that. We'll get a little close and bond or whatever, but right afterwards he's back to doing all these annoying things that just show it doesn’t mean as much to him. It sucks, okay? That shit hurts.”

“What does he do that you don’t like?”

Banri moves onto the next round of flowers and their pots. “Y’know he has a hoard?”

“I do.”

“Yeah. Well, he didn’t wanna tell me. I had to learn from his _mom_. _After_ he had already run off with it. Like.” Banri realizes how much he sounds like a petulant child right now. He’s _not_ , but it’s so hard to voice this frustration. “I really thought we had something. Thought… I dunno, that it was mutual or somethin.’ But I guess it didn’t matter ‘cause he just left without sayin’ anythin.’”

“Do you know why he left?”

“Wanted to get rid of that thing ‘round his neck. Apparently havin’ a hoard’s too scary for him. And just a few weeks ago, I thought we had a moment. And I thought we were gonna be a real thing finally. But it looks like not! Again!” He sets the clay pot down hard in the sink. He’s almost surprised that it doesn’t crack. “Is it me? He just won’t fucking tell me things. First it was the hoard, then it was what his hoard is, and just now it’s what his hoard can _do_ to him. I mean, what the hell? Don’t I get to know if he’s gonna die from something? Don’t I get that kind of fucking warning?”

“Maybe Juza-kun’s scared,” Tsumugi suggests gently.

“Fuck that! He doesn’t have to be scared of me. He’s a dragon. What could I ever do to him?”

“There are other reasons Juza-kun might be scared,” Tsumugi hums. “Maybe he trusts you but not himself. Or perhaps he trusts the two of yourselves but not others if they find out.” He finishes up the last trellis and sets the hose down into its holder. He turns off the water tap. “I’m sure you know by now that he has the power to kill entire armies should someone steal from him. That’s a hard strength to live with.”

“You do it just fine,” Banri mutters.

He doesn’t see how Hyodo can just come to accept who he is and what he is and that those two things can co-exist. Tsumugi’s not a rampaging monster. Why should Hyodo be?

“Not everyone handles things the same way,” Tsumugi replies lightly. He comes to stand by Banri’s side and watches him repot the plants. “I’ve known Juza-kun for a long time now. He’s the type of person to avoid people as to never hurt them rather than slowly learn to avoid that outcome through exposure. He just doesn’t want to take that chance.”

“You mean he’s avoiding me in order to avoid hurting me.”

Tsumugi’s eyes crinkle kindly. “I think you underestimate how close you are to him already. He’s very comfortable around you, you know. He was never like this with anyone outside of his family even as a child.”

“Sure.”

“I mean it,” Tsumugi presses. “If you’re willing to wait, Juza-kun will come to terms with himself enough to put his trust in you like he does his mother and brother already.”

“I _can’t_ wait,” Banri retorts. “I’m just a human, remember? Normal human. I got just one more decade or so before all the fights catch up with my body. Hyodo’s not gonna want an old guy as a partner while he still looks like a young man.”

“The wait might not be as long as you think. Juza-kun responds well to love and patience. Give him those, if you’re willing, and you’re not going to be lonely.”

“Not lonely.”

“Of course not,” Tsumugi immediately accepts. They both know Banri’s lying.

Tsumugi joins Juza in his bedroom only after Juza’s had the opportunity to discuss with Guy and Hisoka the full details of Tsumugi’s illness, the pattern of his falling ill, and looks through Tsumugi’s bedroom. There’s nothing to indicate poisoning – at least that Juza notices – and so he’s simply sitting in the bedside chair when Tsumugi comes in on Settsu’s arm.

Juza tries to catch Settsu’s eye to see if the guy’s still pissed at him. Settsu doesn’t acknowledge him at first. He simply helps Tsumugi to the bed and makes sure to tuck the covers and quilts around Tsumugi gently. Homare comes in to set some snacks on the nightstand and offer a sweet kiss to Tsumugi’s knuckles.

As Homare leaves, Settsu meets Juza’s stare just for a small second : enough so that Juza knows that Settsu isn’t _angry_ anymore but carrying the grudge nonetheless. It’s a conversation that can wait. Settsu shuts the door behind him.

“Banri-kun is such a sweetheart,” Tsumugi sighs and picks up a cookie from the tray Homare had brought. “Sweets?”

Juza accepts a cookie without hesitation. “Not sure ‘sweet’s the best word for Settsu.”

“He’s very doting. He thinks a lot about the people he cares for. Surely you’ve seen a little bit of that.”

Juza thinks back on all those small gift bags from the bakeries that Settsu had brought him before this journey began. He shrugs to hide the tinge of insecurity. Tsumugi smiles knowingly at him, and Juza’s ears burn.

“You know,” Tsumugi teases kindly, “it’s usually a good thing for two people in a relationship to be open with each other. Perhaps Settsu could open up to you about his feelings about your dragonhood more, but it would also be beneficial if you talked with him a little more about where you hope to end up with him.”

“Where I hope to end up?”

Tsumugi nods. “In twenty years, do you want to still have him every day as he is now – but matured through years – or see him irregularly as an aging, passing traveler? Where do you want to live? Does he want to live there? How do you want to live? Does he want that also?”

“I,” Juza hesitates. He’s not sure what he wants from Settsu. “It’s nice havin’ a friend, but…”

“A friend? Nothing more?”

Juza hasn’t really thought about it. “I like what we have now. Don’t care if there’s more to it or not.”

“Really?” Tsumugi continues. “How would you feel if you knew that Banri-kun was still doing all of the things he does with you now, but Banri-kun was also spending his nights in the arms of someone else?”

Juza reflexively curls his lip. He definitely does not like that mental image. Tsumugi smiles kindly at him.

“I’m not telling you how to feel. But maybe think a little more on the subject? I know Banri-kun wants to talk about this with you.”

Juza’s still chasing the mental image of instead of some faceless, nameless stranger in bed with Settsu, it’s himself instead. It’s a messy thought to hold onto : Settsu’s lips on his neck, hands on his waist, knees between his legs.

“Right,” Juza mumbles. He’s pretty sure his entire face has flushed by now.

Tsumugi, kindly, shifts the topic. “So, for what reason did you come all the way to my place with two persons under Sumeragi patronage and the best swordsman of the kingdom?” Tsumugi’s eyes fall to Juza’s chest. “Is it that you’ve finally begun your own hoard?”

Juza tenses.

“Oh, don’t fret,” Tsumugi immediately amends. “No one here will try to take anything from you. You have my word.”

Juza shifts in his seat. It’s odd that Tsumugi is apologizing to him, all things considered. It should be Juza apologizing to Tsumugi for taking up his time and requesting so much guidance.

“No, I,” Juza struggles, “Don’t mind.”

“How did it feel?”

Juza recalls the night : pixies, stars, rosehips, Settsu. Then, darker : his mother on the floor, pure panic coursing through his veins.

“At first it felt good,” Juza admits. “Like somethin’ I couldn’t look away from and didn’t wanna be unable to see again. But, then…”

“It got bad?”

“Felt horrible. Sick and nauseous. Panicked. I pushed Mom to the ground in a rage I can’t remember well.” Juza’s tone quiets ; he’s not proud of this. “Don’t wanna hurt anyone else.”

“Not hurting others is a learned skill,” Tsumugi says. “There’s always risk involved. It took some time for Tasuku and I to get over our own arguments growing up and learning to live together. Before I imprinted on Azuma, I was so jealous that he and Tasuku were getting along so well. I attacked Azuma one night. I’m still not proud of it.”

This is the first time Juza’s heard this story. “What?” he asks.

“But you see how well Azuma fits with us now,” Tsumugi continues smoothly. “He and I are friends, and we can both love and live with Tasuku without fighting about it. Time is, of course, on our side, but there’s something more to it, too. We both _tried_ , and our efforts paid off even if the beginning mistakes were grave.”

“Don’t wanna make mistakes.”

“Everyone does. It’s part of learning. You simply have to hope that you will not do something so bad as to end another’s life or ruin the remainder of a life. Restraint and self-discipline are important, of course. But time is on your side. Banri-kun, too, if you’re confident enough to let him in. Between your mother, your brother, and him, I’m sure you know how supportive and forgiving family can be.”

Juza does think on it. He recalls his mom’s way of handling his hoard : giving him space and helping him and never doing anything more than to educate and help him. She hadn’t even protested Settsu staying with them once she learned who Settsu was as a person. She trusted Juza wholly to not grow too attached to someone as to imprint. In fact, Juza’s not sure she would have even cared if he had imprinted. She had said that hoarding can be a lovely thing, that one day in their small kitchen.

“I assume you’ve come to me with more than just news of your hoard, though,” Tsumugi continues.

Juza blinks. “Uh.” He’s not sure how much Tsumugi knows of stars. “Yeah, I… made a mistake. I shouldn’t have hoarded what I did.”

Tsumugi frowns – small – in confusion and cocks his head questioningly.

“It’s a star,” Juza confesses. It’s strangely easier to say that it was two weeks ago. Perhaps this is a good sign. “But stars can-”

“-corrupt dragons,” Tsumugi finishes for him. His frown has deepened. “How did this happen?”

“It was a star shower. Saw one of ‘em falling right at me, ‘nd I just kinda caught it. A whole star. Not a fragment.”

Tsumugi huffs a breath : expression open in impressment. “That’s quite the treasure to hoard. The odds are unimaginable.”

“But ‘s dangerous.”

“It is,” Tsumugi agrees. “So, what are your plans to address this?”

“Wanna let it out ‘f my hoard. Then take it to the north shores with Settsu ‘nd the others to sow into the sand. Take some fresh star sand back for my mom. ‘nd that’ll be that.”

Tsumugi nods slowly, considering this. “A wise plan,” he says. “And you’ve come to me for advice, then?” Juza nods. “Ah, well, that is tricky, isn’t it? Just like hoarding, letting go can vary between dragons. Or so I hear, at least.”

“What’s’it like? For you.”

“Well,” Tsumugi shifts on the bed and takes another cookie from the plate. Juza’s already eaten his way through eight. “I suppose I feel satisfied with how I’ve helped them grow, and I think of it as if I’ve finished my job with them. I needed to take care of them, but they no longer need me. I can let them go knowing they will be safe even without me. Or so it’s like for my plants. People, I’ve found, are much more difficult.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t actually know how to let some _one_ leave my hoard,” Tsumugi chuckles, but it’s a sad sound. “I feel horrible, really, every time I think on it. I want to give them freedom to choose to stay, if they want. To age, if they want. But, for now, they’re tied to me for seemingly another century almost. I feel horrible. I feel like this is something I owe them, you know? Tasuku never even had the chance to accept the offer in the first place. If anyone should leave my hoard, it should be him more than anyone. But I just can’t seem to do it.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’m just too attached. I _do_ love Tasuku a lot. I’m getting close, I think, though. If he leaves-” Tsumugi shivers as if this distresses him horribly. It likely does. “If he, I can’t quite say it, I’m sorry. But if that happens, then… at least I know that I will not change as a person. I will still be myself. Even if he were to… _leave_ with Azuma, that would be fine, I think.”

Juza meets with Settsu in the foyer once he’s kept Tsumugi company a few minutes into Tsumugi’s next nap. Azuma had come in, then, and saw Tsumugi sleeping – face still wrenched with pain a bit at the corners of his mouth and the corners of his eyes. The gentle way Azuma had combed Tsumugi’s bangs off of his eyelids and to the sides, kissing Tsumugi’s forehead, had confirmed to Juza that Tsumugi’s worries, while valid, aren’t shared by his husbands. Whatever horrible beginning those two had at the start, Azuma must love Tsumugi almost as much as the others do. Juza can’t exactly deny that Homare is still closest to Tsumugi, for now, though Juza remembers a time when Tasuku was closest to Tsumugi.

But Settsu and him are not like Tsumugi and Tasuku : and Homare and Mikage and Azuma and Guy.

“Took ya long enough,” Settsu grumbles as he pulls on his boots.

“Sorry,” Juza mumbles. He fetches his own footwear. “Where’re the others?”

“Asked Homare to give us a moment.”

Juza pauses, then continues to strap up the buckles on his boots. He can only hope this won’t turn into another fight.

“Look,” Settsu sighs. “I get it, okay? I do. I get that you think you’re some sort of curse to the people you’re around. Might get kidnapped. Might get hurt. Might whatever. I get it. I get that people knowing about the star – and everything it can do to you – is dangerous. But for Gods’ sakes, Hyodo, I’m not someone you gotta worry about. I’m the best damn swordsman in the _kingdom_. No one’s gonna be able to take me alive and get me to talk.”

“Not what ‘m worried ‘bout.”

Settsu falters. “Then what are you worried about?”

“Don’t wanna scare ya.”

“I’ve said it before, dude. Y’ain’t scary.”

“I can be,” Juza insists. Settsu doesn’t know what he’s getting himself into. “Ya don’t know what a corrupted dragon looks like, do ya?”

“Well.” Settsu hesitates. “No.”

“Ya know the ruins in the south? All the abandoned villages in the forests? Broken buildings?”

“Do _not_ say what you’re about to say.”

“Yeah, a dragon did it,” Juza snaps. “That’s what _I_ could be. Ya can’t imagine what that’s like, though. So ya keep making these promises ya can’t keep.”

“Don’t fucking accuse me of doing things I ain’t done yet,” Settsu bites back. “You already tried to kill the old man, and I wasn’t scared of ya then. I won’t be scared of ya in the future. Fuck, can’t you fucking trust me?”

“I _want_ to, but I can’t.”

“Fuck that. If ya want somethin’ enough, you can end up doing it.”

“Horseshit.”

“I got my way right into your family, didn’t I?” Settsu yells. “I got to be friends with ya, didn’t I? Shut the fuck up about ignoring what you want. I’m not ignoring what I want.”

It’s clicking, somewhere in the back of Juza’s head, that this means that Settsu wants him : wants him like Juza isn’t ready to fully imagine. Sure, Settsu had been irritatingly persistent back then, but Juza hadn’t thought that it was for _him_ in the end. It was Settsu having fun with what he decided was entertaining enough. It still is, Juza thought. A bit of kissing, a bit of rolling around in the sheets, with the companionship of friends in between, and then gone.

“Well, ya know everything there is to know now,” Juza deflects. “Nothin’ more I can give ya. Happy?”

“No,” Settsu responds immediately.

“The fuck else ya want then?”

“What do you think? I wanna stay with you. I want us to finish this stupid journey, get your stupid star outta your hoard and into some sand, and go home. I wanna learn how to help your mom in the shop better. Get along better with your brother. Stop spending my nights in that inn room and actually share the bed with you. For as long as I can until I get too old to be around you anymore.”

“Too old?”

“Fuck,” Settsu sighs. “I don’t want ya to see me grow old. You’re already gonna have to deal with your mom and brother. I’ll leave before it gets like that.”

“So, what?” Juza finds himself asking. “I only get to see ya another fifteen years? Twenty? I’ve got another hundred left to live, ya know. What then?”

“Excuse me for trying to think about how you’d feel watching me, uh, fucking die?”

“’d rather that than know ya less than a quarter of my life,” Juza argues.

It’s the truth, after all. He doesn’t want Settsu to walk out on this. Settsu _started_ something ; damn if Juza won’t see him finish it. What it is, Juza still can’t pinpoint in his head, but this is important : more important than a mere twenty years’ friendship. Not if Settsu wants to say that he’s in for more than the fuck.

“Alright, alright!”

Azuma’s voice interrupts the pair of them from the direction of the staircase. The man slides down the stairs graceful as a swan and perches between the two of them : slightly to the side. He’s changed shirts into something more comfortable : a thin but warm sweater and lounge pants.

“Both of you have voiced some concerns, and it seems they’re shared. You both want to stay together in the end, yes?” Azuma waits for the pair of them to reluctantly nod. “Then, I don’t see the problem. For now, let that be enough to keep you together. You’ll have time to discuss this after your quest, correct? It’s alright to put things on the table in the meantime.”

“Azuma is correct,” Homare calls from the kitchen doorway. “Let young love be passionate and fiery : let it engulf the two of you in flickering flames so feisty and enticing that you feel nothing but the purest of fervor for each other! Do not be bogged down by such details as to your future, many years away. Live in the moment! Seize it!”

“I see you’ve been reading your poetry books,” Azuma croons.

“Indeed! I am in the humor to craft my own, I do so think. Pray tell, where was it you last saw Tasuku?”

“In the parlor fiddling with the coal stove.”

Homare whisks off down a hallway, skipping as he goes. “Fiddling,” he muses to himself : voice echoing as he vanishes, “what a quaint word.”

Azuma giggles and pushes at Settsu’s and Juza’s backs, ushering towards the door. “Now that I’ve earned you a bit of privacy, I do think you boys should reward me. I heard the cutie alchemist is traveling with you.”

Settsu chokes. Juza, intelligently, says, “Uh.”

Azuma pries the front door open and shoves them through. They stumble through and back into the cold air of near-winter and the dust of the doorstep. Omi and Sakyo, sitting by one of the benches along the front gate, rise to their feet.

“Yukishiro,” Sakyo greets. The stoicism is impressive.

“Sakyo-san,” Yukishiro replies. The suaveness of seduction is equally terrifying. “I must say I haven’t known a greater pleasure than seeing those cute twin moles hugging your glasses’ frames. Are you terribly busy?”

“Quite.”

“No time for a lonely man like me?”

“No, and you’re far from lonely.”

“Ah,” Yukishiro sighs, “but I’m always so lonely without your spectacles by my bedside.”

Settsu screeches. “Ew! Fuck! Ew! Old men do _not_ get to- Fuck!” He dodges the swat from Sakyo’s staff. “What the _fuck_ are you two _doing_? Oh my fuck. No! _No!_ ”

“Settsu, can it,” Sakyo snaps. “Yukishiro. Don’t go spreading false rumors, especially not to the young and foolhardy.”

“False rumors? Oh, my. It’s been so long, I see you’ve forgotten.”

“Forgot nothing,” Sakyo grumbles. “Tend to your dragon, and we’ll take our leave. Settsu, stop making faces. Hyodo, get a move on.”

Omi reaches out and tugs Settsu away. Settsu goes limp in his arms, groaning his displeasures to the sky. Juza follows. And Sakyo, after making some sort of quiet expression to Azuma that Juza _doesn’t_ want to see, takes the rear.

“Fuck,” Settsu moans, still drooping as he walks : pulled along by Omi. “Oh, what did I do to deserve that knowledge?”

“You’re a brat,” Sakyo replies curtly. “Brats fuck around and find out.”

Another groan from Settsu.

“In any case,” Omi’s low and light tones are a welcome distraction, “how did things go? Is Tsukioka doing alright?”

Settsu quits with the dramatics and shares a glance with Juza. His eyes ask how much Juza wants to say about Tsumugi’s condition.

“He’s not that weak,” Juza toes the line of being both honest and not. “‘e was movin’ around fine enough for bein’ sick. A bit o’ medicine will do ‘im well.”

Sakyo hums, and Juza wonders how much of that Sakyo believes.

“And the others?” Omi asks. “Arisugawa and Mikage and Guy-san?”

“Fine, fine,” Settsu sighs. “Honestly, it wasn’t that different from usual. Estate just made it seem like a big deal. They’re fine.”

“And,” Sakyo continues, “did you get your answers?”

Juza doesn’t know if it’s as simple as that. “Dunno,” he answers truthfully. “Tsumugi told me what he could. We’ll… have to see.”

“Well, what was his advice?” Omi presses.

“He said ‘t might help to see it as a protection thing. It needs my protection for now, so I hoard it. When it doesn’t need my protection, I stop. Not sure if it’ll work.”

“Well, it’s a start! Maybe keep thinking to yourself that you’re only carrying it for its protection until it finds a better use.”

“Yeah,” Juza mumbles. The burn of the metal against his skin – underneath his shirt and coat – says otherwise.

“Are we still heading for the shores, then?”

Sakyo opens his mouth to answer, but he pauses. Juza smells it before he hesitates, though. His sense of smell is rapidly improving. Maybe it’s a side effect of having a hoard. Whatever the reason, the nutmeg and cinnamon hits him hard. He glances to the westward road.

Over the hill, a figure rounds the crest and looks down into the valley. From this distance, the person looks more like a kid than anything else. Juza squints.

“Ah,” Omi remarks. “Azami’s here.”

“Indeed,” Sakyo agrees. “Not the best of signs.”

“Azami?”

“Apprentice of the old man’s,” Settsu explains. Juza glances to him, but Settsu’s eyes are trained on the guy. He raises a hand in greeting. “Hates the old man, but he and I get along super well. Or, well, _got_ along super well. He might still hate me for leaving.”

“Why would ‘e hate ya for that?”

Settsu shrugs. “You know how it is. Gettin’ left behind in school while your buddies run off for the world doesn’t feel great.”

Juza can’t say he’s ever even conceptualized what that would feel like. He’s never gone to school, nor had many buddies : least of all buddies who left the village. The closest to that is Sakuya, but even Sakuya still spends the majority of his time around town.

Azami’s panting when he catches up to their group amongst the fields. He’s older than Juza initially guessed and taller, too.

“I take it you have news,” Sakyo greets.

“Fuck off with the condescension,” Azami huffs in between harsh breaths. “This is bad.”

“How bad?”

“The prince demands that you and Omi return immediately.”

Sharp concern takes command over Sakyo. “Why?”

“It’s Taichi,” Azami says. Instantly, Settsu goes rigid as an ice floe. “He’s dying.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wasn't able to write the homatsumu oneshot i wanted to write before the semester began, so i made sure to pepper it in here instead <3


	5. home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> akigumi unites, hyodo's mom gets her arc (yes she has an arc!!!!!), two men love each other with no more barriers, and the fairytale's happy ending

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks to everyone for reading this and keeping up with all the updates!!! i really didn't anticipate it getting this long, but i had fun writing. (can you tell i love juzas mom in-canon lol pls ma'am ditch your husband and marry me) this chapter has mild sexual content twice towards the end, so fair warning!! again, thanks to everyone who was a part of the journey!!!

“What should we do?”

“We go back, of course! We’re not lettin’ Taichi _die_.”

“Use your brains. Taichi wasn’t the target. The Prince was. As both our orders and our oaths demand, we must return for the protection of our crown prince.”

“What about Juza-kun? That has to be taken care of, too.”

“I know that. But our oaths are unbreakable. We return upon the prince’s request.”

“Sakyo-san, wait. Perhaps we should split up instead?”

“Fuck that.”

“Banri-kun, I know you’re upset but-”

“Don’t try to tell me to calm down! I am fucking calm!”

“If Juza-kun becomes even the least corrupted, truly corrupted, then-”

“He’s not yet! Hyodo’s fine! Taichi’s dying! Get your fucking priorities straight!”

“For once, I agree with Settsu. This is an attempt on the prince’s life. We will need to investigate for Prince Tenma’s sake, in addition to aiding Taichi. We will have to trust Hyodo to control himself long enough for this.”

Juza stands a small stretch away from the group : horribly, horribly lost. He’s not sure how to feel about this situation. He’s become accustomed enough to Sakyo and Omi’s company that seeing them leave feels more empty than he had thought it would at the end of their journey. Still, he knows how to handle loneliness. He even knows how to handle alienation.

Yet, that leaves the question of why he suddenly feels so naked and cold. And he thinks he knows the answer. When it’s _Settsu_ on the inside of things – and Juza left outside – it hurts bad. He wants to question Settsu – who this ‘Taichi’ is, what he means to Settsu, what their history is – but he curbs himself and instead waits for the group to make their decision.

“Juza-kun,” Omi calls to him. “Do you think you can manage if we return to the castle for some time?”

“No point in asking for permission,” Sakyo retorts before Juza can even formulate his answer. “He’ll be coming with us whether he likes it or not.”

“Fuck off,” Settsu immediately cuts in. “Ain’t no way you can force a dragon to do anything. Doesn’t matter what fancy little vials you have in your coat.”

“If we’re going,” Azami says, “we should go as soon as we can. Taichi was very weak when I left. I don’t know if,” and he bites off the rest of his words seeing the other three’s reactions.

“We start for the castle immediately,” Sakyo commands. “Azami, you take lead.”

Juza watches the group disperse. Azami heads off for the road with Omi on his heels, pestering the boy with questions as to his health and his travel to meet them. Settsu and Sakyo glare daggers at each other. After a good minute, Settsu turns away first. His eyes land on Juza.

“Hyodo, come’ere.”

Juza doesn’t move from where he stands. Settsu sighs and walks over to him. With Sakyo watching them, Juza doesn’t feel comfortable enough to ask the questions he wants to ask.

“Look, I,” Settsu sighs again. “I’m sorry. I know this isn’t the way it should be going.” He keeps his voice low, and Juza leans in a little to hear. “But fuck, man. Taichi’s really important to me. He and I… go back, yeah? I’d die before I leave him alone. If he’s really dyin’, then I need to see him.”

“Who is he?”

“Uh, hard question. You ask our resident shithead and he’ll tell ya that Taichi’s one of the crown prince’s servants. But we all _really_ know that he and Tenma are like a thing.”

“Ten… the crown prince?”

Settsu nods. “Taichi came into the academy a year under me, but a few years later. So like, I was fifteen maybe? And he was fourteen. Anyway, he sucked at swordmanship. Like _sucked_. But he got transferred to the servantry instead of kicked out. One thing led to another, and he met Tenma, and they just kinda clicked.”

“… Alright.”

“Huh?”

Juza tries to smile for Settsu. “I get it,” he tells him.

And he does – a little – he thinks. Maybe Taichi is to Banri like Kumon is to Juza. He’s sure it’s a little different, but he understands wanting to be there for a junior. He won’t hold that against Settsu.

Settsu nods thoughtfully. “Thanks,” he finally says. “I’ll make it up to you?”

“What do you-”

Juza stops himself from fully asking the moment he registers the leer in Settsu’s eyes. He shoves Settsu back.

“Fuck off,” he grumbles, but he doesn’t fully mean it. “How far is the castle from here?”

“A few days? I don’t know if the old man will give us something to make it so we don’t get tired out or not, but normally it’s like four days from Yukishimo Lake to the capital.”

Juza tells himself that that’s alright : that he can handle maybe two weeks. Surely things can’t go so wrong so that one more month before they reach the shores is all the time necessary for the star to corrupt him. He walks alongside Settsu and tries not to mind when Sakyo takes the rear.

He wonders what his mom would think of all of this.

For only a couple days’ journey, Juza notices that the others are frantic to make as much ground as they can with each day. Juza doesn’t think he’s ever walked this far, this fast in his life. Instead of swinging south by a few hours to catch a bridge, Azami wastes an entire vial of instant-freeze for them to cross the Lion’s Tail river. Sakyo brews them a makeshift tea to curb their appetites as to not lose time to cooking and eating.

And, of course, Juza and Settsu don’t have the time to have that ‘talk’ that they promised each other they’d have.

There are hints that Settsu hasn’t completely sidelined their talk. At night, as they lay in discomfort from the twitching of their overworked muscles, trying to catch some sleep before the dawn comes, Settsu sometimes holds Juza close like at the start of this journey. Sometimes Juza pulls Settsu in close and tangles their legs against the cold. In these tenuous hours, Settsu asks how Juza feels – how the star feels around his neck – and Juza tries to answer as honestly as possible.

They never push it, though. They never find out how violently Juza would react to someone grabbing for it.

It isn’t until three days into their journey – when they’re only one day away from reaching the capital at last – that things come to a head.

The road that they take is a quiet backroad that, according to Sakyo, is rarely traveled by anyone other than official parties under leave of the royal family. As such, they barely encounter a soul along the road. There are small pangs of jealousy in Juza’s chest, though : seeing how well-nurtured the roadside flora are.

Most roads, especially the commoner roads between outer towns and villages, are more routes from word-of-mouth acquaintances than proper _roads_. They’re paths through the trees with the grasses worn down with foot traffic. They’re hunting chairs up in the trees above the lower branches. Those who utilize the roads are often courteous about it. If a road is particularly traffic-heavy by locals, who are particularly inclined to love their immediate surroundings, then the road likely is home to a plethora of cultivated bushes and nearby flora to sustain travelers’ appetites.

The pixies’ road is notable in this quality. No matter how much the pixies hate the disrespectful travelers, they take good care to enchant the berries and the root vegetables. Juza’s never gone hungry on a night-time stay there.

One of the earlier things his mom had taught him about the pixies is how to tell which plants are loved by them and how to harvest the produce so that the plant itself only benefits from the pruning. But even on the roads where there are no pixies, people do a fine enough job at cultivating the strawberries and radishes.

So, it’s with all of this in mind that Juza stares at the autumn-jumpers and the lotus pools and the cornfield blocks – and even the cacti! – that they pass along this half-cobbled road amongst the overarching trees. Even though Omi hasn’t cooked in a few days, thanks to Sakyo’s admittedly-disgusting brew, Juza knows just by looking that the taste of the fruits and vegetables must be better than anything on his village’s tables.

“‘ts magicked fertilizer, innit?” Juza asks Omi as they walk. He can’t tear his eyes off the cactus fruit. “How often are they tended to?”

“Hm?” Omi follows Juza’s line of sight to the cacti. “Oh, yeah. I think some of the apprentices come out once a month and walk all the closest private roads to re-fertilize. Give or take, of course.”

“This’s enough to feed every town south of Knoeld.”

“But of course they ain’t gonna share,” Settsu’s voice surprises Juza a little. He hadn’t realized that Settsu was listening in on them. “Too much effort, I guess.”

“Banri-kun.”

Omi’s tone is sharp with disapproval.

“Whatever,” Settsu grumbles. “People steal all the time, so I guess if ya know it’s here then you’re not gonna be hungry.”

“Except those thieves aren’t looking just for the food,” Sakyo adds from the front of their group. “Us travelers are the main target.”

“Keep tellin’ yourself that.”

Juza doesn’t think he understands. “Why would people rob ya? Money won’t get them anywhere ‘n these towns.”

“It’d pay off a debt,” Sakyo sighs.

“It’d also make us feel a _lil_ bit better.”

Juza flinches and turns around, admittedly slower than the rest of the group. Settsu, for one, whirls around and pulls his sword so fast it actually blurs.

The group of hunters frowns down at them from their perch on the small incline to their west. They’re downwind, Juza realizes, from the road. Two of them have proper bows, but the daggers on their belts look too old and small : the leather of their holders starting to peel apart from age and wear.

“Didn’t think we’d see anyone else on the road,” Omi calls up, ever the friendly de-escalator. “Are you out hunting?”

“According to that one,” the guy who spoke before raises a single hand to point at Sakyo, “we’re _stealing_. Although, I’m not sure who it is we’re stealing from. All the produce out here rots if we don’t harvest it.”

“That doesn’t give you leave to take it,” Sakyo snaps, but he does not move forwards to the front of their group. “What if we had come on empty bellies, and there was none left for us to eat?”

“You’d walk another acre and find more,” one of them yells back : a short and young girl, clinging to one of the older men’s coat.

Sakyo tries to say something back, but Omi gets him to quiet down.

“There’s plenty to share!” Omi calls. “We’re not trying to keep you from any of it.”

“Sure, you might not,” the first guy answers. “But your friend there would. And all your guards and witches would, too.”

 _That_ pisses Juza off. “We ain’t witches,” he snaps. “We’re called magick users.”

“Is there a difference?”

Juza grits his teeth. A hand falls on his shoulder. Omi meets his eyes with distinct, careful concern. Juza turns away. He hates that fucking word. Witches are magick users gone corrupt. He isn’t that. His _mom_ isn’t that.

“Look, guys,” Settsu yells up. “We ain’t pickin’ a fight. Take your fucking food and leave us alone, ‘kay? Ya got a kid with you, for Gods’ sake. Don’t start a fight ya can’t win.”

“It’s two bows against a sword at a distance. I don’t think we’d be the losers, pal.”

The atmosphere is dangerously tense. Sakyo starts to reach under his cloak for something : what, Juza doesn’t know. Even Omi’s shoulders are tensing up like de-escalation is over now and the fight is inevitable. Azami gingerly steps behind Sakyo.

Settsu’s hands are shaking on Lucy.

Sakyo pulls a small staff out. Juza recognizes as one of the various types of ‘alchemy holders’ – Juza doesn’t actually know the proper name for them – that some of the wealthier alchemists keep around. Little vials, of sorts, of potions – chemicals, the alchemists would say – that are volatile enough to work as a bomb or a spray-type weapon, whichever is needed.

“Seems like you’re puttin’ up a fight.”

Settsu raises his sword. “Only if you’re offerin’.”

Within a second, one of the archers has his bow raised and aimed down. Omi’s hand on Juza’s shoulder tightens. Settsu’s hands shake a little more.

“That’s cheatin’!”

“Royalty never played fair against us!” the leader hollers.

“I ain’t royalty!”

“Friends of royalty, whatever. You all benefit from it. Hiro, shoot the bastard.”

Settsu pulls Lucy up to his face, but it’s a fruitless move. A sword can only protect so much of the face, and an arrow to any part of it nearly guarantees death. Juza feels like the ground’s fallen out from underneath him.

Because there’s still so much that he and Settsu haven’t _talked_ about. So much they haven’t gotten to _do_ yet. They haven’t had enough time together. If Settsu left in ten years, it wouldn’t be enough time. There are things Juza wants to experience with Settsu : age, life, a partnership.

It’s infuriating, too. Settsu, the best swordsman in the kingdom, left in the complete mercy of a single archer.

It all takes just a moment before Juza hears the bowstring snap to release. The sword lowers in shaking hands.

And then the arrow clatters to the ground. Its long, wooden shaft splinters a little when it hits the stones of the half-cobbled path. The feathers are old and worn down : the arrowhead chips. The next thing Juza registers is white-hot heat underneath his skin like he’s burning even without a fire. He stumbles forwards. A unique pain crumbles in his forehead.

He hears another snap of the bowstring. This time, _he_ feels the arrow. It hits him hard in the throat – right on his apple – and the pressure chokes him even as the arrow bounces off harmlessly and clatters to the road.

Distantly, he hears panicked voices.

“Fuck! Hiro, _shoot him!_ ”

“I _did!_ I fucking _did!_ That’s a motherfucking _dragon!_ ”

“Bull _shit_ , there’s only one dragon in this damn kingdom, and he’s days away.”

Juza clutches his head in agony and kneels down to put it between his legs. Someone crouches beside him, hands trying to hold him and help him, but they only make the fire burn worse under his skin, and he fights them off.

Things go quiet.

Slowly, the flashing heat and headache subside. Juza realizes he’s been shaking, and he relaxes some of his muscles. A shiver washes over him. The winter air sets back in.

“Hyodo.”

Hands find his shoulder again. The slight warmth they give is now a relief. Juza finds himself leaning into it. His face finds a chest, and he buries himself into the person’s hold. He inhales deeply, and then holds closer upon recognizing Settsu’s scent.

Then, he jerks away.

“Settsu-”

The panic ebbs into sheer confusion seeing Settsu kneeling in front of him, face transparently crinkled into worry and head perfectly intact. Juza's eyes find the arrows lying on the path. No blood covers their metal.

“You’re a fucking idiot, you know that?” Juza snaps his gaze back to Settsu’s face, but the only thing he finds is perhaps the largest, silliest smile on Settsu’s face. Settsu laughs crazily. “I’m going to kill you.”

“Huh?”

And, as Juza stares in paralyzed shock, Settsu grabs his sword and swings it right for his own neck. Lucy bounces off easily, and Settsu lets her fall back to the ground. On Settsu’s neck, the pale gold scales retreat back into his skin.

Settsu laughs : joyous, deep-toned bells ringing in some celebration. “You crazy fucking bastard.”

“That’s,” Juza swallows. He couldn’t have imprinted on Settsu. “‘s that Tsumugi’s?”

“What?” Settsu now pulls back, smiles vanishing. “They’re _yours_ , dipshit.”

“But I didn’t-”

“Did you imprint on your star intentionally?”

“No, but-”

“Do you know how you imprint, _really_?”

Juza remembers the way the star glowed in the palm of his hands against the darkness of the night. Somehow, the memory of Settsu’s face in the moonlight – and the glint of that diamond in his ear – doesn’t feel any different. He swallows thickly.

“I didn’t mean to,” Juza stops there because he’s not sure how exactly to put it into words. ‘Capture,’ ‘trap,’ ‘force into immortality’ all would fit, but they’re crudely shaped and only cut further into Juza’s guilt.

“What do you mean?” Settsu demands. “I thought you _wanted_ me. You have me. For the rest of our damn lives.”

“I didn’t even get to ask ya if ya wanted it,” Juza mumbles. Tsumugi’s words – about wanting to give Tasuku the _choice_ to stay – are echoing through his mind right now.

“Of course I wanted it.” Settsu doesn’t seem to understand how serious this is. “I fucking asked you, didn’t I?”

Did he? Juza’s head still feels foggy. The last wracks of pain are still only dissipating. He’d heard from Tsumugi before what it feels like to have the ghost pain of a limb torn off when even a root is snapped. An arrow to the head – even just in ghost pain – is debilitating. He can barely think.

“Juza-kun,” Omi says gently. Juza realizes the man’s been knelt beside him for just as long as Settsu. “You must be in a lot of pain. Is there anything we can do?”

“Amberwood,” Sakyo says suddenly. Settsu and Omi look up, and Juza keeps his head down. Moving that much might have him vomit. “Amberwood is good for hoarding pains.”

‘Hoarding pains,’ Juza repeats clumsily in his mind. He’s never heard it called that.

“I don’t have that,” Omi mutters, digging through his bag. “I have amber. Is it the same for something like this?”

“It’ll be close enough.”

A smooth, tumbled stone is offered out to Juza. He stares down at the pretty, amber hue. It’s a high-quality gem, unmistakably, but not so high as to be kept for the jeweler’s.

“Here, suck a little on it,” Omi encourages. “If it doesn’t go away by the time we reach the castle, I’ll have one of the magick users bring some proper amberwood.”

Juza pops the jewel into his mouth. He’s never sucked on a gem before, admittedly, and the strange mineral taste is slightly off-setting. He almost goes to bite it before he remembers it’ll crack his teeth sooner than get chewed up.

“Just don’t swallow it,” Settsu grumbles. “It ain’t a sweet.”

He and Omi help Juza to his feet. He sways, unsteadily, for a moment before finding his footing. Azami comes up and hoists Juza’s things onto his back.

“We still have to move quickly,” Sakyo warns.

“Fuck, we know,” Settsu snaps. “Give him a minute ; he’s just gotten up.”

Juza concentrates on putting one foot in front of the other.

“What happened to the hunters?” he asks. The amber almost drops out of his mouth.

“They ran once they realized what they had gotten themselves into.”

“Poor bastards.”

“I wish the rest of you hadn’t escalated the situation,” Omi critiques. “There was no need for any of that. They had a child with them, too.”

“Eh. She was old enough to mouth off.”

“ _Banri-kun_.”

“Okay! Okay! I’m sorry!”

It only takes them half a day to reach the walls of the capital city. Juza hears the city before he sees it. There’s a weird humming in the air with odd noises that don’t follow a beat, and he realizes, as he walks, that it must be the noise of so many people in a single space. He’s never heard anything like it.

They’re ducked in through a back entrance by royal guardsmen who eye with no small amount of disdain and distrust Juza and Settsu. Juza holds Settsu’s wrist tighter.

“Don’t mind them,” Azami tells him. “All the guardsmen are giant pains in the ass.”

“Watch it kid,” Settsu huffs. “You’re talkin’ to a former one.”

Azami sniffs. “Yeah, and I’d be talking about you the same way if you hadn’t left.”

“Fair enough.”

“Stop gossiping,” Sakyo hisses. He pulls Azami back up to the front by his ear. “We are in the _castle_. Behave yourselves.”

“Oh shit.” Settsu starts laughing even before he gets to tell his joke. “I totally forgot. Hyodo, quick. It’s polite to piss on the walls when you enter the castle.”

Juza watches mildly as Sakyo swings his staff at Settsu. But even he can’t hide the small grin that pops up treacherously on his lips when the staff bounces off Settsu’s new scales with every swing.

Omi vanishes off down a corridor, excusing himself off to the kitchens where he claims he’s weeks overdue. Juza figures that’s probably right. The night of the star shower – and of the jewelberries – seems forever ago now. Azami vanishes off similarly, towards what Settsu explains is the servant’s quarters for all the alchemists. When Juza asks where _they’re_ headed, Sakyo solemnly informs Juza that their destination is the hospital bedchambers for the servantry.

The hospital bedchambers for the servantry end up being a wide room without much natural lighting save for a small window at the very ceiling in the back. The room itself smells horrid : a mix of piss and blood and other smells that Juza’s sure he doesn’t want the names to.

“Wait here?” Settsu asks in a whisper without looking at him.

Settsu follows Sakyo to a bed along the wall where a ginger-haired boy sits : back turned. Whoever is the occupant of the bed is hidden under white sheets. Juza waits by the doorway.

He watches as Settsu embraces the ginger-haired boy in a tight hug that lasts more than a few seconds. Sakyo gently pulls the covers away, but his body blocks the bed, and Juza can’t see what the person – what Taichi – looks like. Then, there’s a shift of movement from the bed, and Settsu pushes Sakyo away so he can move up closer.

The bodies part for a moment. Juza catches a glimpse of a young boy – just a little younger than Settsu, by the looks of it – and deep red hair. He wonders if Taichi’s originally a southerner with hair like that.

Azami enters the room with a tray and carries it over to the group.

It’s several minutes later that Settsu pulls the orange-haired boy away from the bed and heads back over to Juza. Juza straightens up. He’s not sure who this boy is, but his clothes are much fancier and much cleaner than the rest of the staff here. Perhaps he’s a scribe or something fancy like that.

“Hyodo,” Settsu addresses him once he’s close enough. “I wanna introduce you to a real good friend of mine. This is Tenma, Taichi’s lover, and one of my older sparring mates.”

 _Tenma_. It hits Juza that ‘Tenma’ is the name of the prince. He all but falls to his knees.

“Uh, don’t do that,” Settsu hoists him back up. “He’s just Tenma, ‘kay?”

“Nice to meet ya,” Tenma offers out a hand.

Juza stares at it. He can’t just take the prince’s hand, can he? He hasn’t washed in weeks, and his hands are stained and dirty. But, of course, he can’t struggle with it for very long before Settsu grabs his arm and Tenma latches onto it. Juza shoots Settsu a fierce glare.

“You’re Banri’s partner, huh?” Tenma asks. His eyes aren’t overtly kind, but they’re tired, and Juza supposes a lot of emotions are hard to express when exhausted to the bone. “Is he as annoying to you as he is to the rest of us?”

“Um.”

“It’s okay,” Tenma says. Now, an awkward fidgetiness is starting to show itself as Tenma seems to have difficulty meeting his eyes. “I’m just the prince in name, y’know. I’m not actually gonna be king one day or anything like that. You don't have to be formal or anything like that.”

“So he says,” Settsu huffs. “You okay if we find ourselves a bed for the night? We’ve been through a lot today. Like. _A lot_.”

“Yeah. I’ll. Still be here. Waiting.”

Settsu rubs a hand on Tenma’s shoulder. “Sakyo-san’s a nuisance, but he knows what he’s doing. Taichi’s gonna be fine.”

“Yeah.”

Tenma doesn’t sound convinced. Settsu claps a last hand to his back before turning to Juza.

“You wanna lay down?”

Juza takes Settsu’s hand. With a last, nervous dip of the head to the prince, he follows Settsu out of the room.

The bed they find is in a better-smelling and a better-lit room than the hospital wing. It’s one of the rooms for the weekly bakers, Juza learns, though the man in question is currently working out in his own bakery in the city. As such, the room’s close to the kitchens and smells perfectly heavenly. He and Settsu rush to peel their clothes off and, wiping their bodies with the rags in the water bucket for them by the fireplace, collapse onto the bed.

The mattress actually _bounces_ underneath their weight, and Settsu groans deep into the pillow. Juza similarly sighs and rolls around a few times just to feel something soft underneath him.

“I have _never_ been more happy to lay down on a bed,” Settsu mumbles around the pillow against his lips.

Juza stares at the ceiling and breathes in deep to smell the herbs still trailing in from the kitchen. A pot bangs somewhere a little far. The window is closed against the winter weather, but the sunlight trailing in warms the room well. Juza rolls over onto his stomach and sighs. He rubs his face against the linens.

“How’s Taichi?” Juza asks.

It feels only considerate.

Settsu is a silent for a moment. “It looks bad,” he finally admits. “If I’m being honest, I’m not sure Sakyo-san’s gonna be able to pull it off.”

“Did you get to talk with him at all?”

“He woke up for a little bit. He seemed real happy to see me.” There’s a long silence. “Thanks, by the way.” Settsu lifts his head from the pillow to look at Juza. Juza lifts his head to meet his gaze. “Thanks for letting me come say bye to him.”

“I’d wanna, if it were Kumon.”

Settsu smiles a little at him. Then, he turns back to the pillow. “Tenma said the night Taichi got poisoned, there were thirty travelers registered in inns about the city. One of them’s back this morning. They’re laying a trap to see if they’ll come to finish the job.”

“Only thirty?”

“Ya need a special pass to get past the gate,” Settsu explains. “You only got in because we were with Sakyo-san.”

“So, what happens when ya catch the guy?”

“Question him,” Settsu shrugs. “See what he wanted. How he did it. Maybe save Taichi once we know what the poison is.”

Juza hums to himself quietly in thought. Not that he’s really thinking, though. His mind, for once, is blissfully blank.

And then Settsu’s pulling away from the pillows and crawling down to him. He straddles Juza’s back a little before laying down on top of him, pressing Juza into the mattress. His dick falls against Juza’s ass. And despite the positioning, Juza can only groan contentedly at the weight on him. It’s much better than a massage.

Settsu kisses the backs of his shoulders warmly, arms tucked under Juza’s armpits.

“Am _way_ too tired for sex,” Juza complains.

“Intimacy doesn’t have to be sexual,” Settsu replies. He presses a breathy kiss to the back of Juza’s neck, which kind of contradicts his point. “I just wanna feel you right now.”

“This is practically foreplay, idiot.”

“My dick is literally on your ass, and I’m still soft. This ain’t foreplay.”

Juza grumbles to himself and feels more than hears Settsu chuckle. It rumbles against his back pleasantly. But, true to his word, Settsu doesn’t do a damn thing to him : doesn’t even get hard.

“Did ya wanna talk?” Juza risks.

Settsu breathes warm against his skin. “Yeah, guess we should.”

“I’m scared,” Juza blurts out. “I’m scared of being alone. I ain’t gonna imprint on Kumon or my mom, but I don’t wanna lose you, too. I think that’s why I imprinted. I… I didn’t want-”

“I know,” Settsu kisses his back again softly. “It’s the same for me, you idiot. What if that star kills you? What if you just lost it one day, and I didn’t know why? You can’t hide shit like that from me. I _want_ you, dumbass. I don’t wanna die before you do. And I don’t want you to see me old. I don’t wanna see you young when I’m old, either.”

“I ain’t keepin’ anythin’ from you anymore.”

“I know,” Settsu repeats himself. “I know you ain’t. Look, I know… it sounds insane. But I’ve been alone even longer than you have. I don’t wanna live like that again.”

Juza hesitates. Sure, he had Kumon and his mom, but surely Settsu had a _family_?

“What’d’ya mean?”

“Look. I wasn’t wanted as a kid. Not beyond being useful for what I was good at, at least. Being good with a sword isn’t all fun and games or anything. My parents just wanted a banner on their fucking resume and sent me off to ‘make them look good’ at the academy here. And, yeah, I let a lot of the praise here get to my head. Before I knew it, I was getting sent all around the kingdom just to slay whatever they told me to.

“They sent me into Tachibana once. Snuck in along the eastern border in the mountain range. There’s an elemental up there – one of those… pure concentrations of energy, right? – that they made me fight. It wasn’t until _after_ that they told me that I was the first person to survive in forty years. And the first to _win_. I was seventeen. I couldn’t… fuck, I couldn’t sign off on things legally or go a lot of places, but they threw me to forty years’ certain death.

“I don’t know why _that_ hit me. Maybe ‘cause Tsumugi visited us in the castle a week after we got back, and, I don’t know, he just treated me so much more kindly than anyone here. But I snapped out of the illusion. And then this place just felt suffocating. They just wanted a pawn for war. So, I said fuck that, and I left.”

Juza isn’t sure how to respond.

“But fuck that. Point is : I needed someone. Kept searchin’ for something to interest me. Because once you fight an elemental… shit, a lot’s really boring. But then you just… bam! And all I could think was ‘ _woah_ ’ like I just knew I found what I wanted. But, come on, you remember how we really first met. I didn’t think I’d have a shot at anything meaningful with ya because I’d never met someone who wanted somethin’ meaningful before.”

“Settsu,” Juza whispers.

“Shut up,” Settsu mumbles now. His lips brush Juza’s shoulder blades. “I don’t doubt you want me anymore. I mean, you hoarded me. And it feels _really fucking good_. ‘Cause I was scared ya didn’t want me like I wanted you.”

“I do.”

“I know that now, bastard.”

Settsu deflates on his back from the whirlwind of emotions that his story must have given him. He presses more kisses to Juza’s back : soft like pixie wings when they decide to land on you if you’re nice enough.

They lay together, sometimes sleeping, sometimes close enough to sleep that the difference is negligible.

Juza can tell when Sakyo’s tea wears off, though. The painful split in his stomach is mind-numbing. Settsu must feel it, too, because within a few minutes he goes from lazily stretched across Juza’s back to curled in on himself, propped up on his knees.

“Fuck,” Settsu groans and falls to the side.

Juza feels his joints pop as he hoists himself up to kneel on the bed. His hamstrings scream at him to stop.

“Kitchens this big have scraps and leftovers, right?”

“Just find Omi,” Settsu yawns, then hisses in pain. “He’s probably already eaten a whole feast.”

When Juza finds Omi in the kitchens, the man has three empty plates in front of him. Juza takes back to their room a whole tray : mashed potatoes, croquettes, braised chicken soup, some herb-and-cheese soufflés. Settsu’s eyes light up like the full moon in the night sky seeing their bounty. Juza reckons they’re going to have a hell of a stomachache later.

They eat together, listening to the fire crackle in the hearth, and return to the bed almost immediately after. Tucked in underneath the soft linens and quilts, they’re finally full and rested enough to kiss a little and press up against one another. It’s the first night that Juza comes in another person’s hand : face-to-face with Settsu and breathing heavy between moans as Settsu tugs on his nipples. He returns the favor not much later and learns that Settsu clings when he’s close.

Tenma comes around knocking an hour later. By then, they’ve washed up (again), and the moon’s risen well into the sky. Apparently, Sakyo wants Settsu to be one of the guards in the hospital for tonight’s trap. Juza gets one last sweet kiss before Settsu dresses and leaves with Tenma. In the empty room, Juza lets his head hit the pillow.

“So, nice night?”

Banri cracks a grin at Tenma’s awkwardness. He knows for a fact that he and Taichi have fooled around plenty before. Tenma has no authority to act like a blushing virgin talking about sex.

“Nice,” he confirms. The sight of Juza’s face as he bucked into his hand – leaking all over like the virgin he was – is a fresh and welcome memory in his mind. “It’ll be nicer if we catch this fucker tonight.”

“Yeah,” Tenma says lowly. “I just don’t get it. Why Taichi? Why not my parents?”

“I know _I’d_ go for your parents,” Banri scoffs. Tenma sighs. “Maybe it’s a test run,” Banri suggests. “Awfully stupid to do a test run and jack up security before pulling the main show, though.”

Tenma shakes his head, and they fall back into silence. Which they should be – silent – so that they don’t give away their trap. Not that the trap seems to be working.

There’s no sound of footsteps or crawling : just the creaky sounds of the wind through the basement tunnels that, long ago, Banri had routinely convinced Tenma into believing were the screams of ghosts. And Tenma was _deathly_ terrified of ghosts.

If it weren’t for the copious naps earlier, Banri would be falling asleep by the time he hears something that isn’t the wind in the basements or the cats hunting the mice. Tenma’s already half-asleep, but a nudge from Banri brings him back. They wait with almost-held breaths.

The door to the hospital room creaks open ever-slightly, and the soft padding of slippers is barely audible on the floor. The whistling of Taichi’s faint breathing is to blame for that. The door closes.

They wait, hidden by the curtains pushed to the back of the curtain rod. In the narrow space, Banri carefully moves a hand to Lucy’s hilt. The bed squeaks. In the next second, Banri slides his sword out of its sheath – metallic warning ringing against the walls of the room – and lunges out for the person at Taichi’s side. In the same second, Tenma pulls out the shackles that Sakyo had one of the senior magick users place a sealing spell on.

But at the very last moment, Banri manages to stop his sword swing. And, as he hears Tenma halt in confusion beside him, Banri stares wordlessly in shock at the woman in front of him. For her part, she looks just as terrified as he feels astounded.

In the glow of the light from her vial, Banri looks down and into the frightened eyes of Ms. Hyodo.

He practically drops Lucy on the spot.

“How’d you get here?” he asks, and at the exact same time, she asks, “Banri-kun, what are you doing here?”

They stare at each other : neither answering the other’s question.

Tenma shoves at him. “Oi, what are you _doing_? She’s trying to kill him.”

“No, she would never-” Banri bites back the rest of that sentence seeing how quickly Tenma’s eyebrows fly up in disbelief.

“I,” Hyodo’s mom whispers hoarsely. “I did do this, Banri-kun. I never meant to, but this is my fault.”

“What are you… you can’t be serious. How? Why?”

Hyodo’s mom’s lip wobbles. “I’ll tell you,” she promises, “but first just please tell me what’s happened to my son. Where is he? Why did you split up? What happened?”

“Hyodo’s fine,” Banri quickly reassures her. He moves around the bedside and scoops her up in a hug. “He’s sleeping now. When we heard about Taichi, I asked him to come with me. He’s fine.”

She slumps in relief in his arms. “Do they know?” she whispers.

“… Yeah.” Her grip tightens once more. “But no one’s going to touch him. No one knows who would sell him out.” Even Sakyo wouldn’t do something like that, no matter how gruff and strict he liked to pretend to be.

“Banri,” Tenma says. “Who the _hell_ is she?”

Banri lets go of her just a little. She composes herself quickly while Banri tries to figure out the best way to explain this.

“She’s Hyodo’s mum. Look, dude, she’d never hurt someone like Taichi. There’s a misunderstanding somewhere.” Tenma glowers at him, shackles still grasped in his fist. “Trust me, man. She raised a goddamn dragon. She’s strong and smart enough to know that killing Taichi would never do anything to anyone except cause grief. Right, Ms. H?”

“I’m not afraid of admitting to treason,” she declares, and Banri’s struck with a unique type of awe he doesn’t think he’s felt before. The boldness of the declaration fills the cold, empty room to capacity. “What I did was an attempt on the King and Queen’s lives and no one else’s. But… well, a horrible mistake happened in the kitchens, and the wrong tray was delivered for lunch that day and...”

She holds out the glowing vial of the odd, silver liquid. “I swear,” she insists. “I came back to heal this child. I was so scared that he would die before I could return, but I had no money to buy this, and I had to go all the way back to my house.”

“What is it?” Tenma demands.

“Starlight. It’s the best hope of healing someone poisoned with dragon’s blood.”

“You poisoned him with your son’s blood?” Tenma shrieks.

“Idiot,” Banri huffs. “It’s a flower. Did you _skip_ your classes or something?”

Tenma grumbles something under his breath.

“I should grab Hyodo,” Banri offers. He levels a hard look at Tenma. “Don’t do anything stupid while I’m gone, okay? Just sit and wait.”

“ _I’m_ the prince here.”

“Yes, yes, your Majesty. If you will honorably excuse me.”

Tenma’s hands shake as Banri heads off for the door. He’s got a hell of a walk back to their room to figure out how to explain to Hyodo that his _mom_ of all people is in the castle and the person who poisoned Taichi. As he exits out the door, he vaguely hears Hyodo’s mom encourage Tenma to take a seat and breathe deeply to relax.

Hyodo’s fast asleep when Banri gets to their room, just as Banri had been expecting.

For a moment, after closing the old door behind him, he takes a minute to simply stare at Hyodo’s naked back in the moonlight : blankets draped just high enough to cover the more immodest bits and hair fanned out on the pillows, which he snores into. So, even despite the situation, Banri takes his time in sitting down on the bed and running his hand up Hyodo’s back. The skin is warm, and Hyodo shifts against the feel of Banri’s hand.

“Babe,” Banri says and brushes some of the hair out of Hyodo’s face. Idiot’s started drooling in his sleep. Banri chuckles. “Babe, I need you to wake up for me.”

When Hyodo is still dead to the world, Banri sneaks a hand under him and pinches a nipple. An _intriguing_ noise half between a groan and a gasp escapes Hyodo’s mouth, and he squirms to get Banri’s hand off.

“Settsu, fuck’ff.” His voice is heavy with sleep. “C’n’cha j’st come ta bed quiet?”

Banri kisses his cheek. “Not my fault someone wouldn’t wake up.” Hyodo grumbles and rolls over. Immediately, there’s the death sigh of sleep. “I didn’t say go back to sleep!”

“ _What_?”

“I need you to get up for me, babe.”

Hyodo peeks over his shoulder with a half-open eye. “Why?”

“It’s really hard to explain, but your mom’s here.”

Hyodo all but launches out of the bed. “What?” he demands. He falls out of bed, and Settsu helps him up only for Hyodo to stumble over to his clothes. “Where?”

“Woah, calm down. She’s with Taichi.”

Hyodo blinks. He slows down his movements, calming gradually. “She knows how to help him?”

“… We think? There’s really no easy way to explain it because I don’t understand it either, but she says she’s the one that poisoned him in the first place.” Hyodo stares at him, jaw agape. “Look, I don’t know. I promised her I’d come get you so she can tell us the entire story at once.”

Hyodo marginally seems to recover from the confusion. He misses the sleeve twice as he puts his shirt on.

“What, did you think she was here to kill you for letting me jack you off in the castle’s baker’s bedrooms?”

“ _Don’t_ say a thing to her ‘bout it.”

Banri sighs : equal parts exasperated and endeared. _His_ idiot, indeed, this man.

They get Hyodo dressed – painfully – and make it back through the hallways without getting stopped by any of the few night staff. When they get to the hospital room again, light shines out from the doorway. Banri tries to share a glance with Hyodo, but the guy just looks stiff as a board. Banri holds the door open for them.

Sakyo and Hyodo’s mom sit shoulder-to-shoulder on the cot, talking to each other over a textbook in their laps. Tenma stands at the head of the bed. And Taichi is awake, for once, watching Sakyo and Hyodo’s mom.

Hyodo’s mom looks up at the entrance and tosses the book onto Sakyo’s lap as she picks herself up. Her arms go wide, and in the next few seconds Hyodo’s crashing into them. They sway a little, side-to-side, as they hug each other.

“Missed you,” Hyodo confesses, face shoves into his mom’s hair. She laughs against his chest. “I didn’t think bein’ away would be this hard.”

“I’ve missed you too,” she sighs. “I think we both needed to remember who we are when we’re alone, though. Look at you,” she pulls back at fusses over his face, “you have _stubble_. My goodness, I never thought I’d see the day.”

“‘s not that much.”

“It’s enough! Have you been eating well? How are things?”

“Good. ‘m good. What are you doin’ here? Settsu said ya poisoned Taichi?”

“Ah,” she wrings her hands. “Yes, that’s true. I really didn’t mean to, but… well things got mixed up in the kitchen. I’m here to heal him, though. If I can.”

There’s a moment where she and Sakyo spare a suspicious glance of shared knowledge.

“Wait,” Banri interrupts. “Sakyo, you’re okay with this?”

Sakyo seems affronted by this question. “I knew Hachiko-san back in school.”

“You _what_?!”

“There was a time when I thought I wanted to be a magick user,” Sakyo shrugs. “Hachiko-san was my senpai at the time. Then, she quit, and I realized I was more interested in alchemy.”

“You went to the royal academy?” Hyodo asks his mom in disbelief.

“Unfortunately,” she answers dryly. “Where else would I gain my crippling hatred of the capital and of royalty and everything related to either of the two? Being poor only goes so far, honey. No, I hate our standing royalty because I’ve seen their ugliness up close and personal.”

“Why do you hate my parents?”

Tenma’s voice, in the corner, sounds small.

“I saw how they treated people and how they ruled their kingdom. I can’t imagine they’ve been good parents to you, if they couldn’t even respect each other.”

Tenma glances away. Banri hides the grin. Hyodo’s mom hit the nail on the head with that one, not that Tenma will ever admit it to a stranger.

“Hachiko-san tried to poison our ruling royalty,” Sakyo explains. “She came to the castle just after the two of you left, apparently, and used her stock of dragon’s blood to poison the tea meant for the king. A slip-up in the kitchen had the wrong tray delivered to the wrong room. Tenma wasn’t thirsty that afternoon, so he offered the tea to Taichi. An hour later, and we saw the results.”

“But _why_?”

Hachiko sighs wearily and sits back down on the bed. She rests a hand on Taichi’s shin, making him jump.

“I got a letter in the mail the day after you left. Homare had written to me, telling me of a particular illness that struck Tsumugi within the last fortnight and all of the wilting of Tsumugi’s hoard that had been taking place since. He was begging me to find a way to save Tsumugi’s life. It took, I do not exaggerate, twelve pages front-and-back of the smallest handwriting I’ve seen from him, and the man writes _small_.

“So, of course, I sent letters to a lot of old friends. I had plenty of reason to believe that the royalty here were poisoning Tsumugi through polluting their water supply with liquid starlight. It’s corruption : not illness. But if Homare had not mentioned the exact manners in which the hoard had been losing their immortality, I don’t think I would’ve ever caught onto what was really happening.

“So, who has enough starlight to do such a thing? Only the royalty would have those sorts of means and funds.” Hachiko gestures with her hand. “Which led me to my next round of letters : _why_. The answer, it seems, is that a war is brewing amongst the royalty and their close cabinet. Your father,” she addresses Tenma, “no longer feels that having dragons in his kingdom is of benefit to him, and he believes that killing a dragon – and stealing its powers – would best strengthen him in preparation for a move on the Tachibana borders at the east mountains. The only way to do such a thing would be to corrupt said dragon first. Of course, he got lucky with Tsumugi, since Tsumugi is a perfectly controlled dragon whose immune response to weakness is not fury but surrender.”

Hyodo blinks. “So if it’d been me-”

“You see why I had to end this,” Hachiko declares with no small amount of anger. “Even Tsumugi is unforgivable. Everything that bastard has done is unforgivable. But I’ll be _damned_ if he so much as lays _eyes_ on my son. So I decided to kill him. And then it backfired.” She sighs. “So, I’m here to fix what mess I’ve created.”

“ _If_ it can be done,” Sakyo mutters. “Even starlight isn’t guaranteed to undo the damage that this much dragon’s blood resin wreaks upon a human body.”

Hyodo shifts beside Banri.

“‘Cause it’s not pure enough.”

Hyodo’s mom smiles at her son proudly. “I see someone’s been reading.”

“Only a bit.”

Banri scoffs. It’s been more than a little bit. Every day, Hyodo asks him to clarify the tricky wording of that cursed book.

“What if it doesn’t work?” Taichi asks. “Will I just die? Will it take longer?”

“We don’t know.”

“But we do,” Hyodo says. All eyes land on him. Banri sees the discomfort wash over him. “Otomiya wrote ‘bout it. He ‘nd the courts proved starlight stopped dragon’s blood resin. ‘ts only if the star’s on the dragon itself that corruption happens.”

“Yes, but this is a little different,” Hyodo’s mom argues. “The dragon’s blood’s already in his system, and starlight is – all things considered – weak for something like this.”

“Then don’t use starlight.”

“Hyodo,” Banri warns.

Hyodo meets his eyes. “I have a star right here. We can use that.”

A general silence falls over the room. Hyodo’s mom rests her head in her hands. Sakyo puts a reassuring arm around her shoulders.

“Hyodo. You haven’t let go of it from your hoard yet. Corruption taken into consideration, trying to take it from you could start a full break from your control.”

“Don’t need it ‘nymore,” Hyodo insists. “Take it.”

Banri narrows his eyes. The silver chain dangles out of Hyodo’s shirt : shining in the light of the candles set up about the room.

He snatches it right off Hyodo’s neck. _Prove it_ , is all he can think in the moment. And, sure enough, Hyodo only blinks in surprise at the sudden motion. The star is in Banri’s hands, and Hyodo isn’t in the slightest angry or terrified about that. They stare at each other : both a little shocked.

Then, Banri tosses it to Hyodo’s mom.

“Heal him,” he tells her. “And we’ll deal with the king. Tenma,” he turns to his friend. “You’ll take care of your dad?”

Tenma’s expression finds its bedrock. “Yeah, I’ll take care of him.”

A knock on the door stirs Banri from his afternoon nap. Slowly, he drinks in the early summer sunlight pouring in through the windows. It takes a few seconds for him to register than Hyodo’s snuck into the bed sometime after he fell asleep. Banri rolls over and trails his fingers over the hickies still bruised along Hyodo’s neck and shoulders and hips. He’d love to wake his lover up with a blowjob, and he’s already lifting the sheets when another knock hits the bedroom door.

Right, the door.

Banri lets the blankets fall back down.

“Yeah?” he calls and hears how drowsy his own voice sounds.

“Banri-kun,” Hyodo’s mom calls. “Is it safe to come in?”

Banri spares a glance to the hickies all over Hyodo. “Probably not,” he calls back.

“Right,” she clears her throat. “Should I work the shop today, then?”

“If that’s okay, yeah. I can work, though, if ya need me to.”

“You didn’t kill my son, I hope.”

Banri laughs. “No, not killed.”

“Alright. I’ll knock again when it’s time for dinner?”

“Thanks, Ms. H.”

Footsteps creak along the wooden floorboards of the hallway as Hyodo’s mom walks back towards the staircase. Banri glances at his watch on the bed table. One thirty sounds like a good time to be a nuisance.

He throws a leg over Hyodo’s hips and positions himself right to lazily grind down and drape himself over Hyodo’s back. At this, Hyodo stirs.

“Th’s position ‘gain?” Hyodo grumbles. His voice, too, is sleep-slurred.

“Thought you liked it.”

“What if I wanted to top this time?”

Banri laughs a little at that. “You always say that,” he hums into Hyodo’s ear and relishes in the small squirm Hyodo puts up. He kisses the shell of Hyodo’s ear. “And then I so much as touch ya, and that thought goes right out the window.”

“Can’t blame me for liking the way you do things.”

Hyodo does move to get up, though, and Banri sits off to the side to let him up. Banri’s _very_ distracted by the small peak of the sheets on Hyodo’s half-hard dick as Hyodo stretches his sore joints.

“What time’s it?”

“One thirty. Your mom said she’d handle the shop today. Which means _we_ get to have the whole afternoon for ourselves.”

Hyodo rolls his eyes. “Right. I should probably work on that order Taichi placed later.”

“What’d he order?”

“A ring.”

“No way,” Banri breathes.

Hyodo shrugs and lies back down. “Said he wanted somethin’ pretty that also worked as stress reliever.”

“Can ya do that?”

“With mom’s help, sure. Was thinkin’ amber and ruby for the jewel. I know he wants it as a gift for the king.”

Banri hums. “Tenma could use some stress relief,” he agrees.

Staging a coup to successfully overthrow your abusive parents off the thrones and then subsequently establish power while still peeling through marriage laws to find a way to legalize his and Taichi’s union… sure is a lot of stress. The last time they had visited, Tenma had looked like he had aged five years. Not even Tsumugi’s plants – newly rejuvenated thanks to Hyodo’s mom’s dragon’s blood working just as well as a cure for him as it did a poison for Taichi – could effectively relieve Tenma’s anxiety.

Hyodo taps his upper thigh. Banri cocks an eyebrow at him.

“Lap’s open,” Hyodo teases.

Banri doesn’t even pretend to think about his answer. He slides back over : this time settling himself with a dick against his ass rather than the other way around. He reaches back to give a few strong pumps, and Hyodo sighs and leans back against the pillows he’s propped himself up against.

“You want me to ride you?” Banri asks.

He leans in and kisses Hyodo. Hyodo holds him in place by his hair, and the tugs on his strands feel remarkably good. He barely pulls away when Hyodo loosens his grip.

“Nah,” Hyodo passes, but his hands find Banri’s ass even as he declines. “Kiss me?”

“Don’t have to ask.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> <3

**Author's Note:**

> i've never written fantasy before, so any feedback is super appreciated!! the rest of akigumi will come later as more people join juza's little adventure <3 i'm only expecting maybe three chapters from this, and i'm juggling it with mankai suisougakubu, so hopefully this gets done quickly?
> 
> elementals based off the hyper(hypo?)stases in genshin bc their design is gorgeous


End file.
